Related Web Works

I generally approach a question not like this: -->x but like this [Image]. I shoot again and again past it, but always from a closer position. (Wittgenstein, qtd. in Baker and Hacker 23).

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ I can remember my first introduction to computers: in my elementary school's library, there was one lone Apple computer, which had to have a disk placed in it before turning it on; a second disk with a program on it could then be placed in the computer. For me, this second disk was invariably a game called Temple of Apshai. I haven't seen this game on the market in years, but for awhile there were a host of similar games dominating the computer-game industry. The player takes on the role of a hero and has to solve puzzles, battle monsters, collect treasure, and wend one's way through a complicated maze in order to reach an ultimate goal. I was never particularly interested in attaining the goal (usually the acquisition of a fantastic object or the defeat of a particularly powerful creature); rather I preferred to explore the maze. It was always wanting to know what mysteries were just around the next corner that drove me forward. The game didn't have to have a particular beginning or ending--just a series of branching, twisting passages that led to new locations, or returned to old locations by a new route.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚI've come to regard this type of game as a metaphor: when I write, and when I teach, I know that I have a particular destination in mind, but it is the journey toward that destination, and the discoveries that lay in its path that give me pleasure and encourage me onward. The twists and turns of a maze are certainly not linear, even though they do lead from one specific point to another and often circle around a particular location, coming near to the entrance to the next level, say, and then veering off at the last moment only to return unexpectedly at a later point; however, the player can't see that this has happened until all of the maze on that level has been revealed. My writing habits follow this pattern also: I find myself ready to end a chapter or a passage on a particular topic only to find that my attention has been drawn to a relevant point which draws me away from my conclusion, takes me to new ideas which demand consideration, and ultimately returns me to my final point. If I do not try to force my ideas to follow a predesigned pattern, I find that I can more successfully convey complex ideas.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ I suspect that the difficulty of rendering thought into a logical, sequential (linear) text is a common experience for most writers. Ludwig Wittgenstein, in the preface to his Philosophical Investigations, struggles with the notion of writing a linear text from complex, nonlinear thought processes; he acknowledges that his thinking process is nonlinear, but he has been taught to write in a linear tradition, and thus he finds that his thoughts are "soon crippled" if he tries to "force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination" (ix). He describes his thought process in terms of travelling "over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction," and as "long and involved journeyings" (ix). When I first read these descriptions I was immediately reminded of the computer-game metaphor I had been contemplating as a description of my own writing process, but Wittgenstein also made me aware that conceiving of a thinking (or writing, or teaching) process is not as simple as the exploration of a maze: there is no single, self-contained passage which can be occupied at any given point; there is, instead, a continually shifting locus of a series of points, always interconnecting, never singular.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ The difficulty with realizing that thought is interconnected in extremely complex patterns is that one must reconsider the effectiveness of current modes of representation. A linear text cannot (with clarity) convey the complexity of the human thought process, and this produces the urge to create non-linear texts; however, in order to present logical and cohesive writing in printed text, the urge to digress into the maze of associations evoked by each new word or phrase must suppressed. Wittgenstein contemplated how a non-linear text might work, writing that "the only presentation of which I am still capable is to connect [my] remarks by a network of numbers which will make evident their extremely complicated connections" (qtd. in Baker and Hacker 24).

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Now, in a new medium made available by the advent of small but powerful computers and advances in software programming techniques, is a "writing space" which would have perfectly accommodated Wittgenstein's interconnected texts. In Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing, Jay David Bolter describes electronic texts--texts that exist not on paper, but in the memory of a computer--as falling "naturally into discrete units--paragraphs or sections that stand in multiple relation to one another. An electronic text is a network rather than the straight line suggested by the pages of a printed book" (ix). One of the most promising computer-mediated electronic media for allowing writers to free their texts from the traditional boundaries imposed by the periodic rhetoric of the printed document is known as hypertext.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ When I was first introduced to hypertext, I thought it showed great promise as a new form of fiction, or as a good way to access information in an electronic encyclopedia. The reader could click on a highlighted word on the computer screen with his or her mouse and be instantly transported to a new scene or dialogue (hypertext fiction) or be transferred from an electronic encyclopedia entry on Copernicus to an entry on Galileo. I hadn't yet begun to think of hypertext (or any computer-mediated text) as an entirely new medium, and I also thought that it must be difficult to write a hypertext because it must involve expert-level knowledge of computer programming. It was not until I discovered a simple to use system that allowed a writer to create hypertexts almost effortlessly (in terms of mechanics) that I began to seriously think about hypertext in the classroom as a possible medium for my composition students to employ. When I started to think about ways I could use hypertext in the classroom, and particularly about methods of evaluating hypertexts, I began to see that my traditional way of looking at a text would be greatly challenged by the new forms that I was beginning to research. I will describe the system I found in detail a bit later in this chapter, but before I do, I think it is important to consider the origin and evolution of hypertext itself, both as an idea and as an electronic system.

The Evolution of Hypertext

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ "Hypertext" is a term coined by computer advocate/visionary Theodor Holm Nelson in 1964. In 1960, Nelson had been working on his own philosophical investigations, a text to be called Truth, Man, and Choice; as he wrote, he discovered that, like Wittgenstein, he too had difficulty in organizing his ideas in a strictly linear form (Nelson 45). In "Opening Hypertext: A Memoir," he articulates the frustrating process of writing a sequential text: . . . you take a structured complex of thought (I like to call it a structangle) that you are trying to communicate, and you break it into individual sequential parts that can be put end to end, and this is a wholly artificial process, a breakdown not intrinsic to the structure of thought you are trying to convey, but based upon the fact that it has to be published eventually in a sequence.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Nelson's frustration with the difficulty of crafting a linear narrative form as a representation of complex, interconnected ideas came at nearly the same time that he was introduced to computers. Nelson immediately saw that computers could be used to write texts which could interconnect and branch off in different directions, allowing the reader to travel through the text like the hero through the maze game, choosing the paths he or she is inclined to follow, rather than staying on the singular path encouraged by traditional linear narratives.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚWhile Nelson envisioned hypertext as a computer-facilitated writing medium, he was not the first to propose a system for creating, storing, and reading non-sequential texts. The idea of a non-linear, interconnected text system was first proposed in 1945 by Vannevar Bush, then Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development.1 Even before the advent of computers and the attendant paradigmatic shift into the "information age" made information- overload a serious possibility, Bush understood that the growing number of publications in all fields was going to make informed selection of information sources problematic:

Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how much of the previous month's efforts could be produced on call. Mendel's concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential. (Bush 102)

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ One of my goals as I teach my students the process of research writing is to provide them with the tools they will need in order to determine whether a source is valid and useful or if it is unsuitable for use. With the amount of information available on the Internet, there is a real danger of becoming "lost in the mass of the inconsequential," so the negotiation of the available information by my students is one of the many new concerns which I feel obligated to address in my classes. Bush's response to the phenomenon of information overload, and the innovations which arose from it, is one way to address the problem of electronic sources in the computer- facilitated writing program.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ To enable scholars to cope with "the matter of selection," Bush envisioned the creation of a machine that would allow individuals to build their own libraries of primary sources and trace paths that connected the sources to each other and to the annotations and extensions to those sources that the user could add:

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, "memex'' will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. (Bush 103)

Bush conceived the idea for the "memex" before digital computing had become a reality, and thus he described his machine as a desk with translucent screens, switches, levers, and motors for rapid searching of microfilm documents. The user of the machine would have the ability to comment on the texts that he or she chose to collect and could also define networks or pathways that would connect the different documents; thus the machine was intended to recreate the associative nature of human thought: "With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain" (Bush 106). Bush goes on to describe a scenario in which an associative pathway which has been recorded by one person could be reproduced and inserted within the pathways recorded by another (107), presaging the advent of computer networking technologies.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ While Bush's "memex" was never built, the impetus for the development of fast, associatively indexed retrieval systems, which could be customized by individual users and which could permit the building of networks of meaning between texts, put into motion the drive to create world-wide distributed hypertext systems. Ted Nelson saw the computer as the technological means to achieve the ends that Bush had suggested, but he pushed the idea to its farthest logical point--he imagined a system that would store electronic versions of all human text ever written, and allow users to add comments, criticism, and linked associative pathways that anyone else could then use or respond to, thus creating a potentially infinite web of hypertextual discourse. Although the idea sounds fantastic and unlikely to actually happen (given current copyright laws and ethical considerations of potentially changing an author's original text), Nelson and a team of designers have actually begun creating this system, which they have named the Xanadu project.2

Defining Hypertext

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ It is important here to define hypertext, as even noted theorists who use computers in their composition classes have mistaken the notion of "hypertext" as simply denoting the fast, fragmented appearance of the text that is generated by synchronous electronic conferencing (cf. Faigley 165). George Landow describes computer-mediated hypertext as "text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open- ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web, and path" (Hypertext 3); I will use these terms to designate the movement through a hypertextual narrative. The blocks of text from which hypertext documents are composed, what Roland Barthes terms "lexia,"3 are connected together by associative links. Interconnected lexia which focus upon a central theme, and sometimes the lexia themselves, are referred to as nodes (Shirk 179); these terms will serve as descriptors of the composition of hypertextual narratives. The term "hypermedia" (coined by Nelson in 1987 as an extension of his earlier term) has also been used to describe hypertext in order to make the distinction that hypertext is not solely textual--it can incorporate image, sound, video, and animation as well as text; however, as Landow notes, hypertext denotes "an information medium that links verbal and nonverbal information" (4); thus the terms "hypermedia" and "hypertext" are essentially interchangeable.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ In 1989, the American Institute for Research's Document Design Center described hypertext as follows:

Unlike a book, where the material progresses from one page to the next in linear fashion, a hypertext document (or hyperdocument) is a collection of computer files. Users are free to trace a variety of paths through the material, choosing which files they will view and in what order. The files may include text, graphics, animation, sound, and even other programs, such as word processors, spreadsheet programs, or relational database managers. (qtd. in Shirk 178)

Hypertext, however, is more than simply a new method for accessing and retrieving information. As John McDaid points out in "Toward an Ecology of Hypermedia," the ability to "move through textual information and images is only half the system; a true hypermedia environment also includes tools enabling the user to rearrange" and add to the material (206). The designers of Intermedia, a hypertext system used at Brown University, describe hypertext as "both an author's tool and a reader's medium . . . [allowing] authors or groups of authors to link information together, create paths through a corpus of related material, annotate existing texts, and create notes that point readers to either bibliographic data or the body of the referenced text" (Yankelovich et al., "Reading and Writing the Electronic Book").

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ The fastest growing and best known hypertext system is the World-Wide Web,Doug Engelbart5 and Theodor Nelson; Berners-Lee defines the WWW as an "Internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing" (Berners-Lee 1). Although this description of the World-Wide Web makes it sound as if its users must be acolytes of the deepest mysteries of computer communication systems, it is in fact incredibly easy to manipulate as a reader and to create WWW hypertexts, called pages, as a writer; additionally, most of the software necessary for reading and writing on the World-Wide Web is free. The combination of ease of use and availability convinced me that this system could be set up in the computer-assisted composition classroom and be used in any composition class. Also, the World-Wide Web system allows any person with Internet-access to "publish" his or her own text and to include links to other texts available on the WWW, so students could theoretically begin writing for a real audience (that is, their texts are not read by only the instructor and their classmates), essentially publishing their writing on the Internet. The rapid growth and expansion of the World-Wide Web has caused a parallel growth in the technology itself, and the World-Wide Web will soon incorporate all other Internet-based computer-mediated < a name="back6">communication protocols;6 that is, most electronic discourse will be filtered through the medium of hypertext, thus changing the way text is written, read, and used. Since hypertext is one of the fastest growing computer-mediated communication applications, it is important to examine how its use affects the acts of reading and writing and how hypertextual reading and writing should be incorporated in the computer-assisted writing class.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Hypertext blurs the boundary between reader and author, at the very least demanding an active reader. Landow argues that since all hypertext systems permit the individual reader to choose his or her own center of investigation and experience, "the reader is not locked into any kind of particular organization or hierarchy" (Hypertext 13). In this sense, electronic hypertext is an enactment of the ideal "writerly" textuality proposed by Barthes in S/Z . Barthes would see hypertext as fulfilling the goal of "literary work (of literature as work)," which is

to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text. Our literature is characterized by the pitiless divorce which the literary institution maintains between the producer of the text and its user, between its owner and its customer, between its author and its reader. This reader is thereby plunged into a kind of idleness--he is intransitive; he is, in short, serious: instead of functioning himself, instead of gaining access to the magic of the signifier, to the pleasure of writing, he is left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text. (4)

Hypertext allows the reader "access to the magic of the signifier" and presents a medium in which the reader can choose more than simple acceptance or rejection of the text--the reader can actively engage the text. A reader of hypertext can actually change the words, magically transforming the signifiers to related to new or different ideas, thus altering the tone or the comprehensive meaning of a particular lexia or node. It is this kind of active, critical reading and writing that I hope to encourage in my writing classes.

Technology and Pedagogical Theory

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ As a teacher of writing, the idea of hypertext and its possibilities for use in a composition class is very exciting, but before I discuss the ways in which technology can enhance a composition class (and why I choose to focus on hypertext), it is important to situate myself ideologically within the field of composition and rhetoric. As a composition teacher, I operate from a particular theoretical base which designates writing (and the making of meaning itself) as a social act, a negotiated construction of meaning; thus I tend to emphasize what James Berlin calls a "transactional epistemology" (155). My understanding of Berlin's transactional epistemology is the action of discourse as it works with and against the writer (and other texts) to generate new ideas--it is this generation of knowledge which separates the transactional from both objective and subjective epistemologists: systems which seek to represent knowledge, rather than make knowledge. I want my students to see themselves speaking from the positions of the various discourse communities, as Stanley Fish calls them, of which they are members and which inform their context-specific discourses. For me, meaning is made through dialogue, so I want my class to be dialogic in the Bakhtinian sense: I want to encourage multivocality both among and within student texts, but in order to do so, I must teach my students to attain a stance of critical consciousness which will allow them to engage in a "dialectical relationship with language in order to gain self-knowledge" (Taylor 135). This "dialectical relationship" is the goal of expressivist epistemology; allowing the inner voice to surface in the writing of the individual as the individual carries on a critically self-conscious discourse with his or her self, aware that he or she is situated within a range of specific discourse communities. The awareness of a socially situated self, and the ability to engage that awareness in written discourse is a necessary accomplishment which prepares the student for engagement in a dialogic discourse with others' voices and texts. It is within such a polyvocal discourse that Berlin's notion of a transactional epistemology can be seen as dialogic--the transaction is the "give and take," the acknowledgement and appropriation of disparate voices within the discourse.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ I see hypertext as one possible way to encourage collaboration in my classes, and through collaboration to engage in dialogue. The dialogue I refer to here represents the process of knowledge construction within a community, and I draw my application of the term from the theories of Paulo Freire and Mikhail Bakhtin. In the third chapter of this thesis, I consider the postmodern/post-structuralist theories which hypertext has been purported to embody, but I devote most of my attention to exploring the ways in which hypertext can facilitate collaboration and dialogue in my classrooms. It is in that chapter that I will provide in-depth consideration of my interpretation of theories of collaboration and dialogue, but I will address the foundations here as a continuation of the way in which I ideologically situate myself as a composition instructor.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ An important influence on the way I perceive my pedagogical responsibilities toward my students is Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a reaction against my own experience of learning, which was firmly based upon what Freire calls "the banking concept of education" (53), I strive to decenter myself as authority figure in the classroom, and I seek to engage my students in a "problem-posing" or dialogic interactivity. The banking concept of education would be identified by Bakhtin as monologic, containing only the voice of the authority-figure/teacher who provides the information to be "deposited" into the empty receptacles that are the students; Freire's "problem-posing" pedagogy, on the other hand, is grounded by a firm belief in the dialogic--relying upon the creation of a dialogue which is not constrained by a hierarchical dichotomy between student and teacher. For Freire, dialogue is "the way by which [people] achieve significance as human beings" (69), and thus, "since dialogue is the encounter in which the united reflection and action of the dialoguers are addressed to the world which is to be transformed and humanized, this dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person's 'depositing' ideas in another, nor can it become a simple exchange of ideas to be 'consumed' by the discussants" (69-70).

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Freire argues that "no one can say a true word alone--nor can she say it for another, in a prescriptive act which robs others of their words" (69); that is, she cannot declare her interpretation to be the actual meaning of another's words, thus subjugating the voice of the other to her interpretation. However, I feel that it is necessary to be able to internalize the voice of the "other," and a fine distinction should be made between the concept of robbing others of their words by speaking for them (as may be the case for male theorists who espouse and promote feminist theory or for actions taken by the white majority on behalf of non-white minorites) and the idea of appropriating others' words and consequently transforming them and returning them to the dialogic discourse in which the words were introduced. As Paul Taylor explains, "In appropriating the language of others, a speaker becomes a participant in a discourse community; the speaker's meaning arises out of interaction with the other members of the community" (137)-- a position drawn from Bakhtin's description of the inherently dialogic nature of language itself:

Language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone else's. It becomes "one's own" only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people's mouths, in other people's contexts, serving other people's intentions: it is from there that one must take the word and make it one's own. ("Discourse" 293-94)

Hypertext provides a vehicle for a method of appropriation which at once acknowledges the original mouths, the original contexts and intentions, and allows the writer to take those words and place them into his or her textual "mouth," context, and intentions.

Computers in the Writing Class

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Computer-mediated communication in the composition classroom facilitates a problem- posing, authority-decentered pedagogy which incorporates both active and reflective dialogue and permits dialogic interaction in text. Electronic conferencing, which has been written about extensively as the primary mode of producing computer-mediated dialogue in the classroom, allows a fast-paced class discussion to take place on-screen; the log of the discussion can ultimately be printed out and used as a written record of the dialogue which has taken place. While electronic conferencing creates a text whose discourse is closer in some ways to notions of orality (see chapter two for a discussion of this idea), hypertext permits a more reflective, literacy- based dialogue to occur over a period of extended collaboration between members of the discourse community that emerges in the writing class.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Hypertext has important implications for creating a collaborative dialogue in the writing classroom. Readers of hypertexts must be active, engaged readers and writers, choosing which paths or links to follow between the "paragraphs" of hypertext (lexia); therefore, as George Landow points out:

Within a hypertext environment all writing becomes collaborative writing, doubly so. The first element of collaboration appears when one compares the roles of writer and reader, since the active reader necessarily collaborates with the author in producing a text by the choices he or she makes. The second aspect of collaboration appears when one compares the writer with other writers--that is, the author who is writing now with the virtual presence of all writers "on the system" who wrote then but whose writings are still present. (Hypertext 88)

Additionally, in any networked hypertext system, the act of linking any document to any other document by a different author is a collaborative act; thus, collaboration can be continued beyond the normal time constraints of the single-term or even the full-year composition class. With the inclusion of e-mail7 as part of the suite of technological applications available in a writing classroom, hypertextual collaboration can take place with or without the direct instruction of the teacher. Moreover, the ability to collaborate without having to be in the same physical space or even having to be working at the same time alleviates some of the more common complaints students have about collaborative writing activities.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Because hypertextual collaboration can take place outside of the traditional classroom constraints, using e-mail and electronic bulletin boards to facilitate direct communication about constructed hypertexts enables collaborations which can also take place between two or more classes that need not necessarily be located even at the same university, or indeed, in the same countries. The largest distributed hypertext system, the World-Wide Web, links nodes of information and publication in nearly every country, and is rapidly becoming the primary interface to the Internet, which currently boasts in excess of twenty-five million users. Students in North Carolina, for example, can view, respond to, and link to the hypertexts created by students in California, or Zaire, or Japan. Using current hypertext technology, applications like James Greenlaw's experiment in intercultural collaborative responses to literature between Asian- Canadian and Japanese students can be extended to interculturally collaborative compositions.

Computers Outside the Writing Class

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ As we move from what Bolter calls "the late age of print" (1) into the era of the electronic text, computer-mediated communication is rapidly becoming the predominant mode of print- based discourse. The sheer volume of text being produced and "published" on the Internet is overwhelming: with over 700,000 messages per day on the Usenet8 system alone, and over three million sites on the World-Wide Web upon each of which is stored at least one page of text, Bush's warning about information overload is to be taken seriously indeed. The enormous popularity of computer-mediated communication is mostly due to its ready availability and incredible speed of delivery; with the price of powerful home computers dropping rapidly and local Internet service providers offering complete access to the Internet for as little as ten dollars per month, tapping into the global communications network has never been easier.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ The popularity of computer-mediated communication seems to have evolved in part from the urge to interact with other visual and auditory media, such as radio and television. Computers allow an interactivity that television does not, but despite the increasing facility to manipulate graphics and incorporate video in computing applications, the majority of communication via computer mediation is still largely textual. Visual elements are becoming more commonplace in most aspects of computer-mediated text, and hypertext in particular allows the writer to craft compositions from both textual and non-textual elements, and this has caused some difficulty for me when teaching hypertext writing--should I allow both visual and textual elements in my students' compositions, and if I do, how do I evaluate their effectiveness? I will return to this question in my final chapter.

Hypertext and Electronic Media

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Hypertext is not the only form of electronic media that has been shaped by computer- mediated communication, but current hypertext systems are beginning to incorporate many of the other media as hypertextual elements. In "Hypertext and Composition Studies," Henrietta Nickels Shirk points out that "hypertextual communication is used to provide linkages within electronic mail systems, journals of ideas and exchange, bulletin boards, information management systems, and computer-assisted instruction" (180).

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Despite rapid advances in software which are beginning to provide avenues for direct collaboration within hypermedia systems (interactive video conferencing, for example), hypertext is currently still an asynchronous9 medium, that is, there is no real-time dialogue occurring in most hypertext environments. I think it is important to point out that hypertext should not be the only focus upon technology in the composition classroom; equally important is the use of synchronous communication both in-class and between collaborating classes, using network conferencing programs, computer bulletin boards, or virtual environments such as MUDs and MOOs.10 Immediate response and the fragmented and multivocal postmodern discourse11 which can arise from such interactive conferences (Faigley 23-24) can provide a greater freedom than hypertext alone, and serve to more fully decenter the composition classroom; additionally, electronic conferencing provides a medium which encourages the development of individual style and voice within a community dialogue. Janet Ellerby describes the effects of using the computer bulletin board in literature and composition classes like this:

Consensus is not reached on the bulletin board. Although certain personas attempt to gather support for their position, there are always dissenters, working to keep the conversation stirred up. Contradiction and difference become exhilarating, and the results are a liberating play of many unique voices with different dialects, conversational strategies and persuasive techniques that are very seldom seen in college writing whose intended audience is the teacher or professor alone. (90)

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Such enthusiastic descriptions of how computer-mediated communication can be used in the classroom must be understood in the context of a carefully planned integration of technology and pedagogy: "contradiction and difference" can be as confusing as they are exhilarating, particularly in the kind of postmodern, fragmented discourse that Faigley describes. This is true of most computer-mediated communication applications--hypertext, for instance, can lead a reader into dead ends, or repetitious circles: in these mazes, as in the computer games to which they are often (erroneously) likened,12 there can be pathways that do not lead to treasure, and monsters which seek to block the reader's way. Faigley also points out that the relinquishing of authority in the classroom can be detrimental to a constructive class experience, so a balance between the decentering of authority and its complete abdication must be carefully maintained.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Reading this thesis, you will see that I am clearly an advocate of computer-assisted composition pedagogy: I believe that computers will soon become the communication medium of choice for nearly all communication activities, written, graphical, and oral. It may seem at times that I am uncritically endorsing the use of technology in the writing classroom, but I am not; one of the main themes of this thesis is that the integration of technology in composition pedagogy must be done carefully, that with proper consideration of the possible repercussions of allowing technology to become an integrated part of the teaching process it can be incredibly beneficial. The key words here are careful and consideration: a technologically-informed pedagogy, like traditional pedagogies, must rest upon solid theoretical foundations in order to be successful, and it is this foundation which I hope to provide. Using computers in our classrooms should not be what Tari Fanderclai calls "salad-shooter pedagogy" (online): the use of a new teaching tool simply because it is a neat gadget about which most students are enthusiastic. As I have mentioned, the work of Paulo Freire has much influenced my approach to teaching; it is his notion of "praxis," which he defines as reflection and action in equal measure (68-69), which I hope to evoke throughout this thesis as I write about the integration of technology and pedagogy in the composition class.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ By carefully using a combination of computer-mediated communication applications in the computer assisted composition classroom in conjunction with a specific plan for their use, we can effect a radically decentered pedagogy which privileges community building and collaboration with less danger of the individual voice being co-opted in a move toward community consensus. Technology alone, however, is not a magic cure for the difficult issues with which I wrestle as a composition teacher: how to engage students in their own and others' texts, fostering community without false consensus in the classroom, acknowledging my own ideological stance and encouraging my students to see themselves as ideologically articulated, as "always simultaneously a part of several discourses, of several communities, [as] always already committed to a number of conflicting beliefs and practices" (Harris, "Idea" 19). Nor is the incorporation of technology into the writing class easy; it is in some ways very difficult to relinquish authority to such a degree that a computer-facilitated pedagogy becomes an affirmation of student-centered learning rather than a possible tool of "technoppression" (Janangelo 50). Additionally, financial considerations and administrative resistance to a pedagogy that is not seen as cost-effective (why can't students just write with pencil and paper?) can also prevent the introduction of computers or other media into the writing classroom. What technology in the classroom can give, once it has been materially provided and actively supported by the institution, is a sense of possibilities: a broad, writing-based canvas upon which to explore pedagogy and postmodern theories in the classroom, and it can provide new media which may facilitate a collaborative, learner-centered pedagogy.

History, Theory, Praxis

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Because I have been using hypertext in my classes while I have been writing this thesis, I have found it difficult to constrain myself to the linear format you are now reading. As in the hero's quest in the Temple of Apshai, I have found myself writing in directions that don't fit a cohesive reading (by print literacy standards) of my topic: I have wandered into what would be dead ends in this format, and I have constructed twisted and turning passages that recursively wander to and from the main narrative of this text, touching back upon themselves in some cases, and in some cases reconverging with the main themes. In a hypertext, this would be acceptable--if a reader chooses to depart from the central narrative of a hypertext, he or she is willing to do so; moreover, in a constructive hypertext, the reader is encouraged to comment upon and add to the hypertext. In the case of this thesis, it could be useful to provide links to the comments of my thesis committee: subsequent readers could then see how this text was shaped by the dialogue that occurred between my earlier drafts and the suggestions and criticism of my committee. I hope to someday rewrite this thesis as a hypertext itself; writing in such a medium would allow me to diverge into other topics and to make available the many pages excised from this version because they did not fit a linear narrative.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Since this is not a hypertext, I have arranged the linear sequence of the text of this thesis into three main chapters. The next chapter, "Resistance to Change: Computers in the Classroom," provides an historical overview of the incorporation of technology in the writing classroom, traces the evolution of the field of computers and composition, and shows why the writing classroom should use the new technologies and media that have arisen from the advent of the information age. In the third chapter, "Theory and Technology," I take a look at what Landow calls "the convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology" (Hypertext). Computer-mediated communication, particularly in the form of hypertext, allows a technological platform upon which the theories of social-epistemic discourse, such as those posited by James Berlin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and others, can be applied and evaluated. This chapter also addresses claims that electronic systems of writing and communication can facilitate collaboration and illustrates one collaborative mode made possible by hypertext. The final chapter, "Computer- Facilitated Pedagogy In Practice," recounts my first attempts to incorporate hypertext technologies into a first year composition class, describing what worked and what did not with an accompanying consideration of the reasons for success or failure. This chapter concludes with a description of what technologies I plan to incorporate in my next composition class and how I will change my pedagogical approach in order to facilitate them.

ΚΚΚΚΚΚ Finally, there are four appendices to this thesis, provided for readers who may not be already immersed in a computers and writing program but are interested in learning more. I have provided a brief description of the technology that was available while teaching the classes I discuss in the final chapter, a checklist of on-line resources, a glossary of terms, and Janice Walker's stylesheet on citation of electronic resources (reprinted with permission).13 For those who would like to get a quick introduction to the theories and practices developed in the field of computers and composition (beyond those presented here), asterisks ([Image] have been placed next to important primary texts in the bibliography. Additionally, words and phrases which appear in the glossary will be referenced to an endnote (which points to the page of the glossary upon which the term is defined) in each chapter the first time they are used. In a hypertext, the reader would be able to click on these words and instantly access the glossary, then return (or continue to browse the glossary and the links it presents).

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Notes

1 The editor of the Atlantic Monthly in July of 1945 prefaced Bush's article with an introductory comment which concluded:

Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages. The perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective of our scientists as they emerge from their war work. Like Emerson's famous address of 1837 on ``The American Scholar,'' this paper by Dr. Bush calls for a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge. (101)

The on-line version of this text is available on the World-Wide Web at http://www.isg.sfu.ca/~duchier/misc/vbush/

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2 Ted Nelson's Xanadu project can be visited on the World-Wide Web at http://www.aus.xanadu.com/xanadu/

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3 Barthes defines "lexia" as "units of reading" in S/Z (6). Another definition is provided on page 131.

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4 The World-Wide Web is a hypertextual information retrieval and access system that allows users to read and write texts that are spread out across the Internet. There are currently 3 million WWW information sites storing the texts which are accessed through the World-Wide Web (as of March 1995), this number is increasing by approximately 25,000 per month. The number of users of the World-Wide Web is currently unmeasurable, although it will most likely be the nearly the same as the number of individuals with Internet access (approximately 25 million as of March 1995). More information about the World-Wide Web and its development can be found on pages 135.

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5 Doug Engelbart is perhaps best known for the invention of the interactive pointing device known as the mouse, but this is probably the least of his accomplishments. While working at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Engelbart began to design computer systems which imitated the cognitive processes that were thought to be the foundations of human thought at that time.

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6 E-mail archiving of discussion lists (sorted by date, author, subject, and continuing thread of discussion) has been added to World-Wide Web applications via the Hypermail program, video conferencing and interactive chat programs have been developed, and current World-Wide Web browsers can access Usenet newsgroups, gopher sites, ftp sites and telnet to remote locations. An integrated e-mail system is now also available.

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7 The definition for "e-mail" (electronic mail) can be found on page 129.

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8 A description of the Usenet computer bulleting board system can be found on page 118, and a definition is provided on page 134.

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9 Asynchronous and synchronous (or real-time) media are defined on page 128.

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10 MUDs (Multiple-User Domains) and MOOs (MUDs which are "Object Oriented" in terms of programming language) are textual virtual realities which can be used as synchronous conferencing programs. While MUDs and MOOs have some very useful applications in the writing classroom, the continuing incorporation of graphics and video in these systems is drawing focus from the textual elements while trying to enact graphical and hypertextual virtual realities; in my opinion, these graphically-oriented systems, while fascinating and rife with possibilities for collaboration, are still too new and too far removed from traditional notions of print compositions to consider incorporating in the writing class at this time. A definition for "MUDs and MOOs" can be found on page 132; a description of educational, writing-oriented MUDs and MOOs can be found on page 126.

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11 Synchronous electronic discussions blur the boundaries between the comments of the respondents and decenter the act of conversing in a written medium as no singular discourse is privileged and multivocality is the norm. This type of communication can be disorienting and fragmented to the point of incoherence until one gets acclimatized to that type of discourse. For a narrative description, see pp. 46-48 in chapter 2.

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12 While hypertext and MUDs may have their roots in computer games, and certainly encourage linguistic playfulness when writing in these media, it would be wrong to simply write off these new media as games--and I believe it would be equally wrong to imply when doing so that games have no value or place in our educational system.

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13 The citation stylesheet reprinted at the end of this thesis (page 138) only covers the conventions of documentation of sources in bibliographic format; it doesn't address in-text citation of these sources. When I am quoting from a source that originated from an on-line document, I have simply designated it as "online" if there are no other on-line sources by the same author otherwise I use a more specific indication, such as the title of a newsgroup, html page reference, or discussion list title. In the event that there are quotations from a discussion list which are from the same author and have the same subject line, I differentiate them by indicating the time each message was posted. Return to the text.