Signs of Humanity in the Digital Age

As one who enjoys the benefits of the digital age, I am often looking for signs of the older technology, signs of human connection so often missing when two people think they are relating to each other electronically but really are not. 

So the news of progress in the retro world of games, paper and print, found in Bill McKibben's review of a new book by David Sax (The Revenge of Analog), is very welcome.

Sax, like so many others, is concerned that the internet and other digital media, instead of forming a community, has made us more isolated; two people on their laptops in the same room are in different worlds.

So it is good to know that, just as vinyl records have had a huge comeback, so has the Moleskine notebook, which like any paper notebook, invites the kind of creativity and spontaneous writing or drawing that Hemingway or Picasso would have used.  Many young people, along with their iPhones, carry a black notebook.  Why?  The digital world provides a lot of opportunity, Sax says, for wasting time, for dispersing our attention from one thing to another in an endless stream of information.

A paper journal, like a printed book, limits us, concentrates our attention, rather than disperses it.  Magazines that have increased their subscriptions in the old-fashioned print format realize that people still like to have a text with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's not that consumers today are neo-Luddites, reacting against technology; it's that the older alternatives can be more inviting and more conducive to the imagination.

Consider the growth in board games. People want to be with other people, to share with them, to laugh and compete in real time, face to face.  The negative effect of video games on the imagination is an issue, so it is good to know that simple games that bring people together are thriving.

McKibben's piece in the current New York Review of Books is worth reading and might motivate you to check out the book by Sax.  Both agree with many other observers and experts that the computer revolution has real drawbacks in leading people to self-absorption, isolation, and to taking online classes that bore them.  Students want and deserve instruction that doesn't merely present facts but establishes a relationship, just as nearly everyone I know still prefers the concentrated focus that a printed book offers over an e-text.

I think the lesson here is that we can have the best of both worlds--and that, like the recent presidential campaign conducted extensively by tweets, the electronic form of communication by itself is severely limited. Even dangerous.

The Future of Textbooks

I should know something more than I do about the future of the college textbook is, having co-authored one that was published last month: The Practical Handbook for Writers, the 7th edition of a book by Donald Pharr, Ph.D. and myself and available from Yololearningsolutions.com.  This new publisher of a book that goes back to the first edition I did in 1979 has an online version, a printed version, and even an iphone version.

As a conventional teacher, I have always avoided online teaching and use as few online resources as I can--at least for serious work. I benefit greatly from articles and reviews on the Internet, but for a textbook, I could not recommend that students merely download chapters of our book, cheaper though this is.

Why? Because having a spiral-bound source of reference as the student writes is simply handy. But I'm old fashioned.

Just recently I found a piece (online) by Meredith Broussard, who doesn't allow e-books in her journalism class.  She has tried them and found them more trouble than they're worth, with students needing charging cords and outlets and complaining about tech issues.

All the two-minute interruptions were adding up, she writes, and she did not want to spend her time in tech support.  She finds e-texts "disruptive technology," and I can see why.

Still, for those who are working online exclusively or who write independently, I am glad that our handbook in its new edition is available in a way that can be downloaded. End of commercial.

Whether printed textbooks will soon (ten years?) be a thing of the past in U.S. education is possible, though regrettable. Options are desirable just as the reading of any printed text must remain an option. Much has been written on this topic.

When I read about a college library that has gone digital, eliminating all the books, I cringe in horror. I do not want to live in such a world.

Good News, Bad News

Some good news on the literacy front: the biggest innovation since Gutenberg--the e-book--is creating more books and a bigger audience for them. So reading is up, whether in pixels or print.

This insight, from Timothy Egan of the New York Times, came as a great surprise to me as I read with sadness of bookstores closing and publishing in the old sense apparently dying, as my wife, Lynn, struggling to get her stories or poems published, keeps finding out.

Apparently, according to Egan, the popularity of Kindle and other such devices has resulted in an increase in sales of printed books as well. Without all the e-books being consumed, publishing in America would be flat or comatose.

One fifth of Americans say they have read an e-book in the past year, and digital readers buy more print books. Why this is the case is not clear to me. But it is good news to a fan of the old technology who believes that nothing can replace the pleasure of holding a book and turning the pages.

Less heartening is the news that Twitter users are being upset by Autocorrect, which unnecessarily and misleadingly changes words in an effort to correct spelling. Are writers no longer responsible for their own typos?

Apparently, a kid in a Georgia school typed "gunna be at west hall today." This was changed to "gunman be at west hall today," as if we don't have enough terrors. The school was locked down for two hours. Most of the "corrections" have been much more minor, just annoying to those involved. Annoying to me is the use of "gunna" and such shorthand terms in any communication. The use of standard English would have prevented this miscommunication.

Errors can cause serious problems, but when they are non-human errors, the effect is alarming. I am glad to say I am not and never will be a Twitterer.