#MaterialDigitalBook Day 11: What is Digital “Work?”

At one point in our conversation during our seminar today, we were invited to share a digital work that we had composed ourselves. The room fell silent. Eventually, participants voiced amazing projects they had worked on, from videos to websites and interactive, digital narratives (e.g. Twine, which I’ve described as the Wikipedia for building games insofar as it has a basic syntax to working in that particular ecosystem). But the fact that the room experienced some hesitation before voicing these projects struck me as evidence that we were actually struggling to define what digital composition is in the first place.

When I started my graduate work, I accepted that everything produced on the Web is an example of digital composition. In some ways, I think this definition still holds, but I also think it’s become more complicated as every part of lives have become implicated in the “digital” to some extent. In some ways, it might seem obvious to draw clear boundaries between face-to-face interactions and digital ones, but when we’re out with our friends at a restaurant and someone decides to “Google” something mentioned in the conversation, is that a face-to-face or a digital interaction? Sure, we’re all in an embodied space together, but digital searching, sharing, and messaging may play tremendous roles in the conversation’s directions and the way that the interaction feels.

Similarly, it might seem obvious that word processing is a digital interaction because we’re using computer software and hardware to produce a piece of text, but if the work being produced is going to be printed out and read on paper, is it really a digital composition or are we just using a digital tool to produce a piece of paper?

The argument I’ve been making in casual conversation about this topic is that we’re all cyborgs already in the twenty-first century. I clutch my smartphone like an appendage, and the digital devices that several people use to augment their lived experiences (Fitbits and smart watches come to mind as some of the most ubiquitous examples, though I think medical devices would qualify in this category too) make it even more obvious that our embodied lives are intertwined in our digitally mediated experiences. I’ve heard some visceral reactions that calling ourselves “cyborgs” feels creepy. I get that: it’s weird to think that our day-to-day lives are directed by mechanical or algorithmic impulses outside of our control. But on the other hand, technology has always augmented and extended our embodied selves in a number of ways. Cars are a machinic extension of our legs. So are bikes. Hammers are extensions of our arms. Tools help extend our purposes often in ways that can make our lives easier, more efficient, simpler.

The big difference with seeing the digital become an inextricable part of our lives is that there are surveillance implications to digital technology being strapped to ourselves at all times. I know that my smartphone is always in some sense listening to what I’m saying; it’s on my person and is tracking my location. A smart watch is similarly paying attention to your heart beats, your steps, your sleep patterns and gathering data that is being collected and owned by the manufacturer of the watch. Bikes and hammers do not collect data, do not have surveillance mechanisms built in. So, thinking through what the ethical implications are of collecting tons of data around us via our digital devices is a big, big, big question, one that I’m throwing out there to acknowledge, but that I’m not going to answer because, uh, I just can’t answer in this space!

So, what does this all have to do with books? And reading? And digital composition? We have to consider the whole environment of our reading and writing situations now and what tools might impact how, what, and why we read and write. Indeed, I probably read the most words on my smartphone of any device that I own. Is my smartphone a book now? When I write something on a smartphone, am I participating in a digital composing practice? I don’t use a Fitbit, but if I did, how might the Fitbit’s encouragement to take steps impact how I read? Perhaps I would pace around my apartment with my smartphone in hand while I was reading if I had a Fitbit, which would probably impact what I would choose to read and how long I would choose to read. In other words, I think the whole digital ecosystem must be considered as we think about the conditions that shape what digital reading and writing looks like.

There is some historical precedence to this thinking. In the 15th and 16th centuries, reading was really locationally-bound because books were HUGE. Books simply could not be hauled from their libraries or their monasteries into private homes, so reading was always necessarily a public practice. Books were read silently in the Medieval and Renaissance eras, but they were also just as often read out loud so the content could be disseminated to more than the one reader. The technology, and its lack of mobility, changed the skills that readers needed to develop; readers, in other words, had to be really good listeners back then because they would not likely have the chance to casually peruse the book that they’re hearing.

We’re in a very different historical situation, of course, but I don’t think the urgency for understanding our material reading and writing conditions has changed much. And now, given how widespread digital device usage is, it is obvious that we are struggling to categorize digital composing or thinking of it as something separate and distinct from composing itself. I apologize if I’m wavering a bit in this post on what precise point I want to make here, but I think today’s activities really got me thinking about the categorization of literacy practices in the 21st century and if trying to identify the “differences” or “changes” in digital reading is really the problem we need to solve. Perhaps what we really need to think about is: how do we make sense of our entire reading landscape, taking into account both our digital AND non-digital reading practices, and considering what habits of mind we need to establish to understand what this multiplicity of environments offers us as learners, readers, and writers?

These are really rough thoughts, of course (probably a preface I should add to everything I write always and forever), but I’m feeling increasingly convinced that attempting to binarize a “digital” reading practice from a “non-digital” reading practice today is perhaps no longer a necessary approach. I’m not quite sure what the alternative is. I don’t think it’s a good idea to make our devices invisible and imagine that content itself is not affected by the space or the environment in which it appears. But I also don’t think it makes sense to categorically consider our digital experiences as operating in a totally different world than our non-digital experiences. What this means for literacy and education remains to be determined.