Journal Post 1

We read in Gitelman and Pingree’s Essay that although technology has been advancing throughout the years it is not completely revolutionary. That being said, yes there are advances in technology that are constantly being unveiled, however something does not just come from nothing. They talk about two futurological tropes. The first trope is supersession. This is the basic assumption that when a new technology is presented it oppresses the technology that came before it. The second trope is transparency. In summary, this just means that the new technology is a more practical and natural form of the previous, rendering the latter insignificant. Both of these tropes are common ways at looking at the evolution of technology, however are flawed in many ways. They imply that new media, or new technology, presents itself and leaves the old media in the dust. On the contrary, media is constantly being built on previous media, creating different versions, forms, and features, but all of it comes from the original and the “original” before it.

Given this understanding of what was discussed in Gitelman and Pingree’s essay introduction we can apply this information and mentality to Porter’s “A Cyberwriter’s Tale.” Porter takes on a detailed journey through his past ways of writing. Starting with the rigid teaching of handwriting by the Catholic nuns to the 1990’s computers. Porter goes through and says that the handwriting taught him discipline, the legal pads helped his writing process as and editor, the type writer helped him keep up with the growing technological world-although was not revolutionary- and the Macintosh provided as a time efficient tool.

Although writing technology and technology in general has changed significantly across the years it was not an abrupt change. It evolved over time and through this evolution, the writing and writers adapted. The technology was a “better” version of the original with applied aspects of the previous media for assimilation purposes. So in a “revolutionary” sense, no, the 21^st century writing technology is not significantly different than past technology. This is due to the fact that new technology such as computers and other forms of media are based on old technology and the technology before it; allowing writers and others to insignificantly move on to the latest and newest writing technology.