The Influence of Change in Writing

 

From the collaborative project, to write a text in a multimodal environment, I could see many aspects of the various articles read. I took from the collaborative project a deeper understanding into the idea of the writing process and the ease of using a new technology. I also was able to see a design concept emerge from the activity. While I did see these attributes I was not able to see the role of hyper attention or even deep attention during the task.

            For our project we wrote with different topics but built on the foundation of language. Piecing together our works gave us the ability to look not only at other’s writing process but see our writing process as it converged. In Hood’s Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy she mentions that while working on a Wikipedia page students can see the writing process; the formation from “ ‘shitty first drafts’ in the process [to] becoming ‘fine’ ” and the development that goes into it”. Working in a group to write the essay showed me more of the revision process that is talked about in writing. Personally when I write there isn’t an in-depth revision, but more of a surface level thing. With the added difficulty of making a cohesive paper the revision went more deeply into the text accounting for more than just grammar.

            I could see why the Google document application can garner more attention. In Technologies of Wonder by Susan Delagrange she reiterates the idea that “old practices and values are often mapped onto the new media that seek to replace them”(8). Technology is a cycle of the same thing just in an advanced form. I can see that idea in the Google document. It works mostly the same as the original word processor that has been around for some time now. Noticing this I realized Delagrange’s idea that “new literacy (and other) technologies will only gain acceptance if it can be demonstrated that they replicate the same values and principles as the technology they supersede” (5). The Google document itself is an expansion of a word processor.

            The use of a Google document was very interesting. One thing Diana George mentions in her article From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing is the importance of design in visual renderings; “ design [has] [a] relation to meaning (777). She points to design as another way to communicate what a piece is trying to convey. In our project we used different colors for each person’s personal point of view, however the text was not separated but presented as a whole. From this design decision we portrayed a collectivity but also an individuality. And as it was a class assignment we stuck with what George would call the basic design for serious work (778). This is a great representation to our audience of how we perceived our project.

            When I was working on the project I was looking for the roles of deep and hyper attention Katherine Hayles refers to in her paper Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes. More than anything I was looking for the hyper attention, since Hayles states that Generation M is starting to be taken over in media and we would be the kids of the study fully enthralled in it (195). However, what would show hyper attention-“switching focus rapidly among different tasks”- in this project were not characterized (187). The different capabilities of the Google document were not utilized. We stuck to the bare minimum our attention heavily on what we were writing. On the other hand I don’t think the full potential of deep attention was reached on this assignment either. Hayles defines deep attention as “concentrating on a single object for long periods, ignoring outside stimuli while engaged” (187). There was no real need of analysis or to look deeper into our work, because it was all in all a more opinionated piece. Once our objective was over so was our attention, which in turn happened pretty quickly. From this I’m wondering is Hayles left out a middle attention, something that floats between the two but is neither.

            While using the Google document I can see the rise of importance of media and multimodal outlets all of these theorists call for. On the other hand though I do not think everyone, even those fully immersed in technology since their birth will rely heavily on these aspects of new technology. In George’s piece she states an interesting fact, that we’ve always used visual, sometimes more sometimes less but its always been there. And I see the same in multimodal environments; there will be those who are immersed in it and those who occasionally touch it.