Technology as Pharmakon

In Nancy Kaplan’s piece “Ideology, Technology and the Future of Writing Instruction” she address a reoccurring problem that I keeps coming up for me: how does one use technology (or language), and not become wrapped up in the power structures that it has been perpetuating and reinforcing for over thousands of years? How does one do anything? How is one able to move outside the limitations in order to bring in new insights? Although she states the problem clearly, I think it has far reaching implications: “Tools or technologies enable, but also disable: they expand conceptions of what exists and what is possible, but also contract the field of potentialities. Tools or technologies validate some practices as natural and right, but proscribe others as deviant, impractical, or simply unthinkable” (Kaplan 14). 

Therefore I think an interesting entry point into the implications of technology can be found in Kaplan’s discussion of print technology: “its formations and empowerments seem simply natural and right” (Kaplan 14-5). However, I think that print technology is not the only technology guilty of this, and books are not the only medium that are guilty of this. I think films and websites can be just as limiting to their viewers. I think part of the problem, at least on a very basic level of language, is that one has to believe in the language in order to use it. Therefore, it has to be naturalized and normalized. So it is not only a problem with a medium or a technology that transmits meaning, but it is also there in language itself. So this problem comes up all over the place. I think that this relates to what Shirky addresses in the problem of professionalizing information, when “professionals become gatekeepers” who enforce norms, and then “equate provisional solutions to particular problems with deep truths about the world” (Shirky 59).

Therefore, I think that these problems can occur in any communication where the artists/writer/speaker/rhetorician has attempted to close off interaction by ignoring Kolko’s concept of a dialogue over time between user, product, and designer (or in the rhetorical situation: audience, text, and author). I think this view is a way out of the narrow debate between technological determinism and social determinism that Kaplan addresses at the end of her piece. I think the problem is deeper than this debate; it has to do with how we view ourselves and how we communicate meaning of any kind. So I think this is important for me to keep in mind when dealing with creative projects in the course, such as the cyber poem and the video. How do I offer entry points for the viewer? How do I allow them the ability to see how I am constructing meaning? How am I allowing for a creative experience that doesn’t simply end with my own creation? How do I create a sustained conversation with my work?