I liked this interview with Dennis Baron, the author of A Better Pencil.
Historically, when the new communication device comes out, the reaction tends to be divided. Some people think it’s the best thing since sliced bread; other people fear it as the end of civilization as we know it. And most people take a wait and see attitude. And if it does something that they’re interested in, they pick up on it, if it doesn’t, they don’t buy into it.
I start with Plato’s critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They’re not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down — the ultimate irony.
We hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won’t have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there’s no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant — it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of “this is going to revolutionize everything” versus “this is going to destroy everything.”
So it’s always true that the new technology — whatever that new technology is — is going to destroy civilization, make kids into idiots, etc.. Fortunately, this never actually seems to be the case. (Not so far, anyway). If anything, scholars seem to be finding that the internet — by making people write much more — is making us into better writers.
P.S. By the way, it’s also not true that the current generation of kids knows less than past generations did. People have been saying that about young people since at least the 1800s, and it never seems to have been true.
The computer has changed writing, that’s for certain. Having learned to write on a computer (an Apple ][e, to be precise), I know that the way I write is strongly influenced by the ability to launch into something, knowing that I can hack it up and move it around at will. This caused some friction between me and teachers in high school who wanted three separate, distinct drafts of my work because that’s how you had to do it on a typewriter. I don’t do drafts. I have one living document that’s active until I publish it (and sadly, when it comes to blogging, often after I publish it, as I catch typos and misspellings I missed the first four times through).
I don’t think I’m particularly unique; I’d bet most people who learned to write long-form essays after the mid-80s write like I do. And I think it’s unquestionably a better way to do it. After all, the reason you’d do a first draft, first revision, second revision, final draft was because you literally had to re-type each one from scratch. The ability to edit on the fly is undoubtedly a great and undervalued change.
(As for the internet, I maintain that we forget just how close to science fiction it is. A computer network that lets anyone share information with anyone else in the world, instantly? That’s crazy talk.)
O tempora! O mores!
I sort of agree with you about drafts, Jeff, but (to complex it up a bit) when I used to write on typewriter (and I find it amazing to think that I used to write on typewriter!), I’d sometimes literally cut and paste paragraphs from past drafts in order to make the current draft. So those documents were more living and fluid than you might think, although of course much less fluid than working on computer.
But there are other working methods that produce drafts. For people who work with readers — either in a class, or because they prefer having readers, or because they’ve got an editor — drafts are produced because you have to hand something to other people that they can read, at intermediate stages prior to the finished product.
I don’t really think that one writing method is superior to another, in the ways that matter most. I mean, it’s not like novels have suddenly gotten a whole lot better in the last 20 years.
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The discipline that typewriters imposed was helpful to many writers. On the other hand, the freedom that computers provide is helpful to many writers. There’s no one right tool.
But computers are, for most of us, a much better tool than typewriters were.
I recently heard an episode of The Debators on CBC (which, for those not fortunate enough to get to hear it, takes two comedians and presents them with a typically outrageous statement to debate) on the topic of whether email or letter-writing is better.
The side in defense of email made exactly this point, but in a phrase that still cracks me up:
“Email is great, but our kids will be sending each other notes in their farts. And they’ll think it’s the freakin’ best.”
I think the instant-editing feature of computers can choke up some writers, though. I find it more difficult to get a first draft done now that I start it on a computer than I did when I hand-wrote or typed the first draft.
I think that good blogs (e.g., Alas!) can improve our abilities to argue/discourse well. When in the past did most folks get to engage in written arguments between multiple participants? Politicians, scientists, lawyers, and other scholars had written debates in journals and newspapers, but the rest of us just had to sit and watch.
I find that arguing in writing makes me think much more about my positions than verbal discourse. It also gives me the ability to review other people’s points-of-view much more carefully than in a verbal discussion.
(I’m also a hopeless speller – improving, but no native talent- so computers often save me from seeming a complete fool)
I like to draft by hand because I’m such a bad typist; if I try to create on a keyboard I constantly have to switch back and forth between composing and finding the needed keys.
But I do transcribe as soon as possible (my handwriting isn’t great either, for one thing) and I have to say I like Jeff’s approach, not worrying about discrete drafts.
-Gogol Bordello, Ultimate
The constant “new technology is destroying our kids’ minds” crap normally doesn’t worry me but there have been a few people recently promoting it here in Australia and the quality of the arguments is pretty poor.
Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield is one example. She thinks that “screen culture” is going to do permanent damage to our brains because they are “very adaptable, sensitive, vulnerable brains”.
On “screen culture”:
You see, according to the good Baroness Professor, “screen culture” is “two-dimension[al]”, because it lacks
Now, I don’t know about everyone else, but that sure as hell hasn’t been my experience of the interwebs, computers, games, mobile communication or whatever else. I say that as someone who loves books, films and conversations, too. I also like that I can have a library of ~125 books on my iPod.
And Miranda Devine (who, to be fair, is a hack of a writer) adores her and loves promoting her ideas in the most nonsensical ways possible.
(all quotes from the Baroness Professor from her interview on the 7:30 Report)