Technology Politics

A way to characterize several of this week’s readings is to say that technology is weapon of wielding power—it can provide us with power to support the status quo (as Selber’s definition of traditional computer literacy does), as well as a space in which to subvert that power (as several of Hess’s faculty web pages attempt). In general, technology on its own is most often decontextualized and considered as a combination of individual parts—which fits with what most universities consider as being “computer literacy.” Selber’s complaint is accurate—that most considerations of computer literacy do not think of it broadly, among a wide variety of perspectives (14). Such is the problem in Hess’s study, that faculty members are resistant to what Hess names as inevitable—the requirement of specific sections and information to a faculty web page—similar to the decontextualized fallacy of traditional computer literacy, university-mandated faculty pages erase individual identity and create pages that are no more than a series of individual parts. Two years ago, I redesigned the MA-Literature program website at BGSU (see it here) and created exactly that type of faculty web page—each based on a DreamWeaver template, filling in each box of the (invisible) table with the required information. What kind of identity does this type of page offer? On a different note, how is self-created identity (that which Hess studies) any more “authentic” or even “computer-literate” than the faculty pages I created? Certainly, in the pages Hess studies, several faculty structure their web pages as sites (literally) of resistance, but that is only one rhetorical option of many. I could go on, and may return to this idea, but will close with Selber’s comment that technology won’t solve our problems or create change—that possibility is situated only in social forces (8). Therefore, technology isn’t powerful in itself, but it is only powerful within a social context. By changing that social context, as Selber says and Hess hints at, we can change and reimagine computer literacy.

--eliz25