English 505

This may seem like a rather disjointed response to Dennis Baron's article "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology": it encompasses talk of chimpanzees, screenwriting software, and Shakespeare. These are, however, a few thoughts that my brain spun off from the text.

First, the chimps. Baron's take on the history of literary technology got this former undergrad anthro minor recalling an interesting tale that still sticks with me. Just two or so years ago, a group of primatologists set up a fleet of video cams in the jungles of West Africa and were able to observe previously undocumented tool usage by chimpanzees. The chimps were fashioning both hammer- and straw-like utensils from sticks and using them to smash and suck ants (their food) from trees and other ant homes. The human observers even noticed chimps saving these sticks for later use and carrying them from place to place as their populations moved about the jungles. These observations blew some theorists in anthropology fields away. It was previously thought that apes (and all other tool-using, non-human creatures) relied only immediately available materials; it was rarely considered that they could form complex, premeditated toolkits and production-and-usage processes.

You're wondering, “What does this have to do with pencils and pixels?” I suppose I bring up the chimp-tool story because my reaction to it was not unlike that I had to examples in Baron’s piece. Though it is indeed fascinating (but perhaps, not all that surprising for those of us who dig Darwin) that chimpanzees possess the intelligence to make and use tools, it is quite important to note that these tools, their production, and their usage are the conception of individual chimps: there were no observed instances of SHARED LEARNING; each chimp discovered for itself how to best extract ants and therefore, tools and methods were frequently unique and never (at least, perceptibly) passed on among generations. Not to congratulate our own species too much (we do quite enough of that), but it is remarkable that we humans can, through our brainpower, come up with new tools and methods and we can also FINE-TUNE, BUILD UPON, and INCREASE THE EFFICACY of technologies that come before us. So, the relevance of this long tangential anecdote: yea for technology! To move forward is decidedly – even definitively – human, and it is from this very belief that I come to share Baron’s suspicion and frustration with the Luddites and whackjob Unabomber-types he describes.

Referring, specifically, to literacy technologies (an area perhaps more pertinent to this discussion than the “Animal Planet” territory into which I’ve just tread), I personally have enthusiastically tried to adopt the newest word-processing hardware, software, and methods. Beginning with the day my parents’ (rather primitive) Brother Whisper Print replaced my pen collection, I have oriented myself to the written word through electronic type. Now a Creative Writing, M.F.A., I would feel just as comfortable referring to myself as a Creative Keyboarding student. My composition and revision processes manifest themselves onscreen, so much so that I find myself at a loss for words when confronted with only an ink- or graphite-filled utensil and paper with which to write. The computer has totally restructured the way I put together ideas through language, and the most obvious way that it has done so is in my reliance on FinalDraft scriptwriting software to compose my screenplays. I hold a bachelor’s degree in Cinema Screenwriting: it is a favorite hobby and I’ve often considered it a possible career. I have never, even once, written a script by hand or even typed one in an unformatted word-processing program. For me to express cinematic ideas (dialogue, camera shots, etc.) in words, I depend on FinalDraft’s cleanly formatted templates. Even so, should a new update or a new program come along, I am prepared to move forward and give it a try.

If I may continue with personal reflection …
Although I share Baron’s passion and support for the lively tradition of ever-evolving literacy technologies, I must admit that I do find myself somewhat challenged by its effects on language usage in general. I (somewhat hypocritically, as I am likely just as guilty of such crimes myself) regularly find myself cringing at the sloppiness and lack of discretion which computer-based communication methods seem to engender. I like my language “literary” (in the – perhaps vague and snobbish – intellectual sense) or “anti-literary” in a knowledgeable, experimental, and/or purposeful way. I was surprised, however, to hear my own words as I conferenced with one of my English 106 students this week. She claimed to have trouble reading Ramage’s “Rhetoric: A User’s Guide” and compared its dense, scholarly language to her required high school reading of those “old British guys.” I expressed my empathy: arguably Ramage and quite a few old British guys wander into phrasing that’s full of hot air. I then encouraged her, though, to remember that English is an ever-changing language, that Shakespeare himself wouldn’t understand a word of her IMs, but that that mutual lack of comprehension is not indicative of her (or Shakespeare’s) shortage of smarts but rather the shifting times. When I find myself taking the same elitist and restrictive tone toward language that Baron cautions against toward technology, I’d best remember my own words.

So, excuse the rambling ... Feel free to comment on my nonsense or to add your own. Happy Labor Day to all.