Untitled - witz cultural

3't 5RECONFIGURINGLITERARYEDUCATIONdocuments, and their relation to courses, disciplines, and universities on themistaken assumption that electronic documents are essentially the same asprinted ones. They're not.Digital media, hypertext, and networked computing, like other innovations,at first tend to be (mis)understood in terms of older technologies. Weoften approach an innovation, particularly an innovative technology, in termsof an analogy or paradigm that at first seems appropriate but later turns out toblock much of the power of the innovation. Thinking about two very differentthings only in terms of their points of convergence promotes the assumptionthat they are in fact rnore alike than they really are. Such assumptions bringmuch comfort, for they remove much that is most threatening about the new.But thus emphasizing continuity, however comforting, can blind us to the possibilitiesof beneficial innovation. Yes, it is easier to understand an automobileas a horseless carriage or a personal computer as a convenient form oftypewriter.But our tendency to put new wine in old bottles, so common in earlystages of technological innovation, can come at a high cost: it can renderpoints of beneficial difference almost impossible to discern and encourage usto conceptualize new phenomena in inappropriate ways. Thus, thinking ofan automobile as a horseless carriage not only emphasizes what is missing(a horse) but also fails to take into account the way speed greatly changesthe vehicle's relation to many aspects of self and society. Similarly, thinkingof a computer, as so many users do, as a fancy typewriter that easily makescorrections prevents taking advantage ofthe labor-saving possibilities ofthedigital tert, such as its configurability by styles or the ways it permits seamlessmovement between paper documents and those moved about by e-mail.Working with the right paradigm-that is, conceiving digital media inthe correct terms-isessential if one is to take advantage of their specialstrengths. The paradigm, in other words, is more important than the purchase.Unfortunately, many computer users still think primarily in terms ofthe book. Examining educational institutions, including my own, revealsboth that they commonly use the print paradigm in inappropriate applicationsand they often fail to take advantage ofthe particular strengths ofthedigital technology in which they have invested so heavily.There is nothing strange about such resistance during a transitionalperiod, and examples lie close at hand. During the first decades of e-mail,many potential users in business, education, and government preferred faxes,which still rely on the physical page, despite the fact that for those with Internetaccess, the telephone charges associated with faxing documents madethem much more expensive for the individual person or administrative unit.