Two Quick Points

This morning’s discussion covered most of the topics I would have liked to discuss here, but I do want to mention two unrelated points in the readings. First, one of Daley’s interesting observations about multimedia practices is the effects that emerge serendipitously from most successful products. That a product is “most successful when it emerges in a large part during the process of creation” may not be an risky claim since, after all, this is certainly true of any print-based product; however, her gesture towards an “‘an ecology of experimentation’” is one that may be more pronounced in multimedia production. After two days of work in unfamiliar media, I have certainly found the need to be more flexible and have realized the restriction in being too sure when producing a text. I hope I’m not the only one who’s counting on what Daley would call a “collision of intelligences” in tomorrow’s (and Sunday’s?) editing session! On an unrelated point, Brandt’s attention to the role that social relationships play in literacy acquisition is apt and is exponentially furthered by the attention she affords to the material technologies of those practices—typewriters, family bibles, metal alphabet boards, chalk slates, etc.. Since each of these material technologies are often embedded within social system (family, church, work), it will be rare that any can be used strictly as an instrument to exert any expressive desire. In considering this material dimension, Brandt further complicates literacy acquisition and should remind us that instructing students in using any technology should account for this type of relationship to what we may consider neutral equipment.