Digital Literacy and Cynthia Selfe: Good & Bad Technology

Recently I've been reading Cynthia Selfe's book Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, a book that's almost too old to be completely relevant to us (it was published in 1999), and yet there are many aspects of this book that are spot-on...and many that are not.

Selfe says that "technological literacy refers to a complex set of socially and culturally situated values, practices, and skills involved in operating linguistically within the context of electronic environments, including reading, writing, and communicating." Even in 1999, when computers were not as prevalent as they are today, Selfe recognized the importance of being able to not only use computers, but to be able to effectively communicate with them. Today, computers are all around us and we are constantly in the presence of technology, whether we realize it or not.

Selfe frequently quotes other people in her book, and many of them are not on the side of technology. Like Plato, they not only scoffed the usefulness of new technology, but claimed that it would have terrible negative affects on society. Selfe refers to Barry Sanders's A is for Ox on page 33, who had some very harsh criticisms about technology, claiming that "the computer has helped to erase the inner core of the human being--conspiring, that is, in the obliteration...of stories and storytelling--it has hastened the destruction of the family."

It's very true that computers have negative consequences when used improperly, but Sanders goes way too far to claim that computers have "hastened the destruction of the family." Computers can be praised for helping keep family ties and friendships strong, and no better example comes to mind than my own use of Facebook to keep track of people who no longer live anywhere near me. About three years ago I was dating a solider who deployed to Afghanistan for a year. He often couldn't use a phone for a while and written letters take a long time to travel that far, but by logging onto Facebook his family, friends, and I could quickly see that he'd left a status or responded to something. Even if the communication wasn't directly aimed at someone, we all knew that he was at least alive. For the entire time he was gone I relied on technology to keep in contact with him and to know he was safe.

Computers don't have the capacity to "conspire" as Sanders claimed. Computers don't care what you use them for, and they can't do much without human input. Technology is completely neutral; it is what humans do with it that determines if it is being used for good or bad.