Writing as a Technology (Response)

I agree with you. We need to consider "writing as a technology" along with "writing is a technology" combined with the ambivalence of faculty toward this theory. Haas (2006) makes a good point when she outlines the debate between Plato (1973) and Derrida (1981).

Haas argues Plato doesn't join Socrates when the philosopher "denounces writing at length," but Plato does argue "writing gives the illusion of wisdom while in fact fostering forgetfulness," and that writing cannot "answer queries put to it." For Plato, writing lives in the ambiguous material world, so it cannot be trusted or valued as can speech.

However, Derrida argues that Plato must use writing to denounce it as a medium. "For Derrida, writing is not ancillary or secondary or derived, but is always there" (Haas, 2006, p. 7). Haas argues that Derrida wants to "deconstruct Platonic binaries--particularly...speech and writing, but also body/soul and immaterial/material" (p. 8).

So this argument on the duality of speech and writing can be applied to the presupposed duality of writing and technology. Is technology a medium for writing or do the two work collaboratively in what Haas describes as Derrida's writing as a "cultural system?" If we view writing and technology through the lens of "cultural system," then we can argue that these entities are not separate from each other--rather they are connected in a way that to ignore technology is, in effect, to ignore the process of writing and how human beings interact with this process.

"Any effect of computer networks on writing process is a result of complex interaction between the technology itself and the teachers and students actively using the networks to achieve those goals" (Neuwirth, Palmquist, Cochran, Gillespie, Hartman, & Hajduk, 1994, p. 36).

As Brown (1999) states, "the computer is simply the latest step in a long line of writing technologies." Including the pencil, right?