Last year I did a report in a journalism class on the affects of the internet on newspaper readership, subscription, company profits and job loss within the industry. I also interviewed editors from both local papers as to their views on the future of the newspaper business including recent spectrum of statistics over the past 10 years. There were various opinions about the present problems and the future predictions, similar to what was discussed in Bolter's article.
Journalism majors in my class were being told to investigate another major, the forecast was grim, although some in the business still help fast to the belief that newspapers would never cease to exist, saying people would never completely relinquish their morning paper rituals.
This reminded me of Annie Proulx's quote that people would never read a novel on the screen; she never imagined a Kindle, or a laptop small and cozy enough to snuggle up in bed with. I agree with Bolter's assessment that people will accept a few inconveniences for more accessibility and options.
It is amazing to me how things change so gradually over time, perhaps through mindless living, that we begin to accept new modes of functioning until we are completely caught up in them and can't imagine being without them, or how we functioned before.
For example, how did I ever keep in touch with my oldest son without a cell phone that connects me constantly to my youngest 10 years later? Or how we did long tax forms and computations by hand year after year, or research and write a report from scratch as a student 30 years ago. I remember standing in a gym with 2000 college students all walking around with cards trying to get different teachers at tables sign the card so that we could register for their class. Barbaric!
With every advancement it seems so impossible to have lived without them, and certainly not appealing to go back to living that way.
Digital Authors:
Bolter says, "we tend to magnify the distance between author and the reader, as the author became a monumental figure, the reader only a visitor in the author's cathedral." I had not thought of it like that but it is an accurate view of the history of books and our perception of notable published authors. I liked his perception of the way technology can empower the reader and ".. tend to reduce the distance between author and reader by turning the reader into an author herself(3)." Can you imagine 50 years from now, parents taking their kids to a book museum the way we dig out our records and 8 track tapes? Digital books will develop and eat into profits the way downloading music has affected CD sales, referred to in one essay online as "barbarians at the gate." Progress always marches on.
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Manovich:
Interesting, provocative and confusing. I just am not very knowledgeable about technology terms and concepts but am willing to learn. I struggle to understand exactly what he is talking about technically but I am interested in learning the history that he is trying to explain and preserve as he has been part of the whole process of the evolution towards the "e-culture". It didn't occur to me that no one had preserved the information and artifacts that he bemoans are missing from the early cinema age, or that no one is tracking and writing about the technology advances now. I can start to see his passion for the significance of having a "record and theory of the present (33) ", rather than just speculation about the future, especially when it is changing so fast. Even if technology develops in a different direction than present analysis projects, he wants to have a record of possibilities even if they are unrealized, of a "horizon which was visible to us today but later became unimaginable."
Manovich says there is a historical perspective missing from previous eras and I look forward to some discussion of this in class to find out more about what he means.
Technology in schools:
Bolter talks about classrooms in which books are replaced by virtual environments. In at Ed Literacy class I am in, we read a report that projected that within 10 years there would be a laptop for every high school student. At $300 per computer, it equaled the cost of 2 textbooks, so it would soon become more cost effective to have the laptops. Imagine the affect on the billion dollar textbook industry. There was a sci-fi book written back in the 70's called Ender's Game by Orson Card, where the boys in the futuristic war training schools had computer screens embedded in their desktops, as Bolter refers to being a real possibility in his article. I want to catch up and hopefully keep up with all the possibilities to use in the classroom.
NEWS - 9/13/10
Idaho became the first state to adopt the new concept of an interactive textbook,
" The Idaho Star: Idaho and it's People" for the 4th grade level (one benefit is that it ways ounces instead of pounds). (9/13 Idaho Statesman)
There was an argument in the school I am working in, discouraging me from using computers in classroom assignments. The teachers claimed that since every student did not have access to a computer at home, it was not fair to make the assignment. My claim was that what was not fair, was to NOT teach the kids new ideas and uses for computers in education; it was not fair to all those who had computer access to be missing out on using them. Students can go to friends houses, the computer lab before or after school, but it is only letting them get further behind to not have access to learning and using computers in school.
PS.. just saw a cool movie that somehow reminded me about these topics and speculation about the future, "Inception." It is about accessing dreams and being able to design and affect the architecture of your dreamscapes. I liked the idea and the digital effects. Has anyone seen it?
Newspaper Death Watch
Estimated newspaper publishing market decline in OECD countries, 2007-2009 (in per cent) –
E- BOOK SALES
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