We are presently living in a time in history which has been labelled by some as "the late age of print." Bolter, (2001), in "Writing Space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print.", talks about what I am experiencing in my life as a huge transition phase. A transition that is not an easy one for me, or "my kind", and one about which I have tremendous mixed feelings. For me, it is a major upheaval in the way that I have traditionally used print for the purposes of reading and writing.
Let me take you back to 1983. Just starting my freshman year of college. An aunt had given me a teal blue colored plastic typewriter to bring to the college, where I was boarding. It was light and portable, and it was my first typewriter. I didn't take a typing course in high school, I figured I would find my way, one fingering it. I did pretty well with the one finger system, writing my papers in French and Spanish, adding the musical note accent marks in fine pencil or pen afterward. I still have a few of these charming ancient term papers hanging around somewhere. At the time, this was an acceptable way to arrange your coursework in a foreign language program. (I still prefer to add accent marks on afterwards; gives an extra chance to edit!) Everybody was preparing their work in this fashion. I will admit, as soon as my typewriter ink had run out, I was mooching from my roommate, using her electric typewriter. This one had capabilities that were far advanced to the manual plastic one that I had brought along with me. By the end of college in 1987, some classmates actually had their very own P.C.s for their very own use in their very own dorm rooms. Most of us at this small private college were impressed with this, and considered that these lucky students must come from extremely wealthy backgrounds to be able to afford such an expensive and technologically advanced item for their educational use. When I re- entered academia, so to speak, in or around 1995 or so, I trekked to the student center on the university campus to use the PC's for their word processing capabilities in preparing my coursework. I had moved around a bit, and my prized plastic teal blue typewriter must have been sold at a yard sale or something. Maybe it is still in my parent's basement or attic, you never know what you can find there! I do know that you can find books, lots of books,....moldy books. I grew up in a literacy infused childhood. My mother was a children's librarian for a time. We were taught to respect books, and I can remember her saying time and again, "books are our friends." Every evening, my father would sit at the edge of our beds and read Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," or other classic works of literature. So, as you can see, which may be the case for many, all of my formative years were associated with the traditional usage of print for reading and writing purposes.
I am not enjoying this shift that society is imposing upon us. I am in deep mourning for the way things used to be. I do like the word processing capabilities offered by the new digital technology, especially since my professional and educational advancement is dependent upon this, but I and my entire extended family (that was born between 1930 and 1975) does not have much fascination for new technology. We do not communicate on the internet, and we don't even use the texting capabilities offered by our cell phones. This is a difficult transition for my kind. My siblings with children are feeling tremendous pressure to "get with the program." People are constantly trying to shove down our throats how much better our lives would be with more technology. We just sort of look at them strangely. My sister can't afford to buy or maintain a computer ( yearly upkeep cost around $2-3,000) for her school age children, so she was forced to get a gmail account at the library because this is the method adopted by her public school for communication with families. How do we suppose eyesight will be at 75 years of age, trying to re-scribe wavy and contorted groups of letters to gain access to a website?
I saw the most beautiful book the other day, it was no more than palm size, the exposed outer edge was gilded, the small red tail of a bookmark trailed out, and it caught my eye. Just moments ago, this whole text was erased.
I remember writing term papers in college (1970)--manual typewriter, all-niter, in one draft. I won't deny using copious amounts of white out, but that was indeed a different process from how I write now on my Mac. And it fostered a different mindset in the writing. Start-to-finish in one draft. Looking back 40 years, I'm not sure how I did it?
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