In *Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print*,
Bolter argues that computer science graduate students in the 80s
"constructed a technology that was congenial to their culture" (209). This
is part of a larger argument that we shape technologies to our purposes;
early newspapers, for example, were revolutionary in purpose, though they
usually don't function that way now. PowerPoint and other presentation
technologies seem to me to follow this rule: they have been shaped by us
to do certain kinds of work (initially, to help make business
presentations more effective). That university professors use this
technology for what Bolter calls "unidirectional" communication should
come as no surprise, given that it would lend itself to this (lecturing is
the old technology way to communicate unidirectionally) and not to
"talking back".
But PowerPoint is not in and of itself bad, despite the
idea that it has certain affordances (Donald Norman's term) that push it
into certain uses. One of these
affordances, for example, is the ability for the presentation to be posted
on the web where it can become part of a dialogue or polylogue or what
Bolter calls "network culture". I use it extensively, but I rarely use it
alone. It is usually embedded in an environment including face-to-face
discussion, email exhanges, even blogs. And people stretch PowerPoint into
weirder shapes than that--some use it as a word processor because their
companies won't purchase Word!
Roger Graves
Associate Professor
Department of English, DePaul University
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
[log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask]
For the list archives and information about the organization,
its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
