dissertation
Reassembling Writing Technologies: Historical and Situated Studies of Rhetorical Activity
Writers have responded to new media technologies of writing and communicating by refashioning existing literate practices for computers and developing new computing practices. Combining historical research on hypertextual, collaborative writing environments from the 1960s with situated studies of current writers adopting software to support memory and invention, my dissertation examines the reflexive processes through which material technologies, literate practices, and literate ideologies are shaped. Prompted by the rapid proliferation of computer technologies and their disruption of existing practices, many writing researchers have focused on the materiality of writing (e.g. Bolter, Bruce, Haas, Hayles, Kress); however, a comprehensive framework that links materiality, ideologies, and practices has remained elusive. In this dissertation, I argue that a combination of theories of mediated activity (Vygotsky, Wertsch, Engeström, Nardi) and actor-network theory (Latour) offers a productive way to understand, and intervene in, emergent uses of writing technologies.
Despite the excitement they often stimulate, new technologies do not always work smoothly to support writers’ activity. Because intersections of computing and writing practices are enacted so tacitly and habitually, they present difficulties for researchers attempting to pinpoint the role of hardware and software in writing activity. The designers of the innovative writing systems of the 1960s implicitly and explicitly blamed users for not training themselves fully, and users blamed the designers for creating systems that were too difficult to learn. My interviews with writers regarding their memory work shows the same dynamic today, as users condemn some features in the software as unnecessarily complicated and designers continue to blame users in blog posts and interviews. Instead of focusing on the breakdowns writers encounter with these technologies to pass judgment on either designers or users, my dissertation uses moments of disruption to examine the processes through which new forms of writing emerge and technologies are altered or abandoned. A key goal of this dissertation is to provide thick descriptions of how writers’ goals are realized, frustrated, and reshaped through their engagement with technologies.
Depictions of frustrated computer-mediated writing also speak to the ways alternative technologies and uses meet resistance. By focusing on innovative computer designs in the 1960s and 70s, my dissertation illustrates how competing definitions of usable systems and theories of learning were embedded in writing software. With the subsequent standardization of so-called intuitive interfaces, one particular version of ease of use has dominated software design. My study of writers’ memory and invention work traces the effects of these simplified interfaces on the ways writers work to coordinate their goals and practices with software that often seems unaligned with their intentions.
Viewing the work of composition and computing as situated within distributed networks of people, technology, institutions, and ecologies offers a way of overcoming the limitations presented by these interface designs and literate ideologies. Such a perspective supplies a richer rhetorical account of mediated literate activity, activity that includes more than the creation of print or alphabetic texts. By creating a clearer picture of the history and modern deployment of the artifacts, practices, and ideologies available to writers, my dissertation proposes a more strategic, rhetorical view of computing that may aid writers, teachers, and designers as they navigate the interface between digital technologies and the demands of rhetorical situations.
My opening chapter, “Reassembling Computer-Mediated Literate Activity” establishes the motivations and theoretical framework of the dissertation by applying theories of mediated activity and actor-network theory (ANT) to issues regarding the effects of computer technologies on writers and writing. By directing attention toward the often unseen networks of artifacts, people, and institutions supporting standard practices, ANT helps to explain the kinds of resistance and acceptance new technologies meet. The chapter uses theories of mediated activity to supplement ANT’s focus on artifacts and broader networks with closer attention to particular actions and people’s complex motivations. This combination of ANT and theories of mediated activity counters the simplified representations of writing with computers that are embedded in word processors and other software. Viewing writers and technologies as collaborating during the situated activity of composition opens a space to depict the use of technology not as a matter of straightforward control, but instead as a question of the tactical coordination of active, mediating components.
The On-Line System (NLS) of the 1960s and its project leader, Douglas Engelbart, serve as the focus of the second chapter, “Augmenting Literacy: Introducing Writing to Computers.” With its innovative hypertextual, networked writing environment and five-key chording keyset (the mouse’s original partner), the history of the NLS illuminates how alternative possibilities for composition were erased as more conventionally print-oriented concerns became standard in software and hardware. Comparing Engelbart’s ideas about writing with composition research, especially early writing process theory, I argue that writing research has much to gain from engaging with complex models of digital writing that foreground embodied rhetorical work, such as the one developed alongside the NLS.
The third chapter, “Computing Attachments: Engelbart’s Controversial Writing Technology,” traces an actor-network account of the resistance and support the NLS and Engelbart encountered from key military and corporate sponsors. By detailing the particular ways these sponsors responded to the disruptions introduced by the NLS (including its high training demands and unfamiliar writing constraints), this chapter avoids the more traditional narratives that position Engelbart as the misunderstood genius who was ahead of his time. I argue that the conservative response to the NLS sought to maintain existing purposes and genres of writing, marking as inferior the complex and distributed models of literate activity supported by the NLS.
The fourth chapter, “Distributing Memory: Rhetorical Work in Digital Environments,” describes a study I conducted over several years with writers regarding their recent (and often frustrated) adoption of bibliographic and note-taking software. My analysis of these interviews and demonstrations shows how these writers engage in memory work and other literate activity that is distributed within functional systems consisting of bibliographic conventions, digital media, other people, and their own personal stances and practices. These writers demonstrate an ingenuity in working with and against the affordances of technologies as they allow their goals to be shaped by some technologies but reject or modify others that are too disruptive.
In the conclusion, “Adopting New Writing Technologies,” I draw together the depictions of disrupted and fluent computer use as well as the theoretical frameworks presented in order to develop a heuristic for writers adopting new technologies. By addressing the variety of ways practices, attitudes, resources, and technological features can be configured to minimize the disruptions introduced by new technologies, the heuristic avoids dictating hard and fast rules. Expanding rhetorical work to include contingent strategies of computing enables composition scholarship to move beyond existing binaries of novice and expert computer users and emphasize that strategic use of rhetorical tools—including the computer—never implies a total mastery, but always a situated, cunning use.