I love our title: it has the rhythms of empire, the voice of the prophet,
the vision of the missionary. In its movement our title carries us from
local to global via interrelated systems: the curriculum, the American
post-secondary scene, the world.
I trust in this vision, this energy to keep our discussion moving with its
great centrifugal force. I want us to keep in mind, however, the possible
and actual downside to what we'll be celebrating and advocating in this
panel. Technology is expensive, and lots of us can't pay the price, or if
we do we have to go without something that may be more valuable or crucial.
The latest statistic I've seen says that something like 10% of the world
has access to the World Wide Web-an irony that is entirely evident to my
colleagues in South Africa-and in Springfield, Massachusetts. Even if the
figure were 20%, or 30%, and even if access were defined as having, as all
of us on this panel do, computers at home and at work, we're building an
elite here and excluding multiple billions of people.
I'm asking us to think, even if only occasionally, like bean-counters and
do some cost-benefit analysis. If we buy and install technology, what are
the trade-offs? In an article that I've cited perhaps too often for my own
good, W. Wait Gibbs pulls together studies that suggest that in 1998 it
cost a corporation something over $10,000/year to own a PC, including
depreciation, maintenance, network services, operator-training, and the
time that the operator spent 'futzing' with the computer, learning what it
could and could not do. In corporations, computers replace people, so the
cost-benefit analysis looks pretty good. In post-secondary education, we
quite properly resist this exchange, but it's happening anyhow, as we lose
full-time faculty positions that are replaced by part-time/adjunct teachers.
In our field, cost-benefit analysis comes hard to us, and I think I know
why. There's Moore's law that tracks and predicts the steady and rapid
increase in computing power. There is the seemingly-miraculous ability to
make multiple copies of huge files for no apparent cost and in no apparent
space-the miracle of the loaves and fishes enacted daily on our desktops.
In the face of these daily miracles, of the huge potential in technology
for Writing Across the Curriculum, how can we think like bean-counters?
Well, we can't, but I'd like us, as we think ahead on our topic, to keep at
least loosely in touch with the potential downside of technology for us as
teachers. As Anne Herrington and I have noted in a recent College English,
emerging technologies bring us not only the possibility of web-based
curriculum but the possibility of computer-scored and graded student
essays. As I've written elsewhere, on our campus the effects of WAC are
being undermined by larger class-sizes and fewer full-time faculty. And I'd
hope that we'd also keep in touch with the material conditions in which we
and our students live. Technology connects and includes, but even in
America, with our growing wealth-gap, technology also excludes.
Keeping all this in mind should not inhibit, but should enrich our
discussion. Let's dive in to the rich possibilities for productive change,
not as enthusiasts (a word that had terrible connotations in the 18th
century!) but as creative and critical educators. I'm looking forward to
our interchange.
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