Madden, Shannon. “Obsolescence In/Of Digital Writing Studies.” Computers and Composition 33 (2014): 29-39.

This was an intriguing essay that approached digital writing studies in ways that I’d seen before, in other contexts, but made some unexpected arguments (and, I think, some problematic demands on pedagogy). We’ve all heard the phrase “planned obsolescence” as a cursed marketing plan of the evil capitalists -- at least, that’s how it comes across sometimes -- and there’s certainly truth in that when it comes to digital technology. From iPhones to apps, the changes made produce reactions ranging from annoying to expensive to, in Madden’s eyes, damaging when it comes to teaching and learning environments.

Madden begins by defining the term obsolescence as “a market force” that scholars of writing studies need to “resist” when it tries to “harness”… “literacy, communication, and pedagogy” (29). We also learn about Moore’s Law: the “belief that microprocessing technologies are rendered obsolete w/in 18-24 months” (36). Her overall argument is crystallized at the end of this piece, when she states that “writing scholars and teachers should do more to critique obsolescence in design because our professional practices are bound up in obsolescence and because obsolescence has human and environmental consequences that have been ignored” (36-37). As Writing Studies scholars and teachers, we are obligated, she argues, to fight back against and “question the consumerist habits enforced by digital culture” (36). We must do this on a two-pronged front. First, there’s the “solutionist viewpoint,” a utopian standpoint that presents technology as a solution to every problem, ignoring the complexity of the problem itself...a “reductivist” approach (36). Second, there’s the mentality of “digital defeatism” at the other end of the spectrum, a phrase coined by Morozov that means we should just accept technology’s presence and learn to make the most of it (36). Taken together, she says these two worldviews “preclude critique of technologies and foreclose change” (36); it is this danger she argues our field must resist through research, critical awareness, teaching, and (it seems) consumer power.

Her article makes a series of interesting observations and references, which I’ve listed below as bullet points. My aside comments are sub-bullets.

• Her article calls attention to the effects “planned obsolescence of digital writing technologies” have “on the teaching and study of writing” (29).
• Scholars have encouraged the field to recognize the invisibility of the technology interfaces when it comes to the composing and designing realm.
• Interfaces are “the hardware and software points of contact b/w consumers and machines” (29).
• Kristin Arola – writes about materiality of technology in terms of learning, composing.
• Acknowledges that it is tough to stay aware, explore “multiliteracies” or materiality, when the technology is changing so quickly (30). For example (one that SR mentioned last class): she cites an example study on Google Wave. The interface was discontinued, but even so the critical scholarship could be “transportable even when the technology is obsolete or unavailable” (30).
• But I had to wonder how that might be done, based on what common premises of learning objectives or models? This makes me wonder whether the basics of rhetoric might be the common ground to all that we teach.
• The “expanded potential” created by technology also creates problems of design that filter into our classroom teaching and our scholarship (30). She cites author Banks, who suggests that questions of access are aggravated thanks to obsolescence because many students end up using outdated, cast off technology that puts them behind the power curve, privileging those who can afford to keep up with the turnover of new technology designs (31).
• Obsolescence is not only an access issue, it’s a “design issue” as well (31).
• Innovations create psychological dependence feeding into marketing, but also create an environmental crisis (recycling isn’t really recycling, see p.32).
• Then there’s the issue of “devaluation” – related to pricing and perceived “value” of old vs. new tech (32).
• AND, it’s a control issue and educational (literacy) issue (33) – problems which are made “visible” when we consider or study obsolescence.
• Example of Research on Design & Obsolescence – the shrinking or miniaturization of technology also creates a trend that emphasizes “tool miniaturization” that some argue affects cultural / social realms.
• Example: smaller phones “dissolve the distinction b/w public and private” (34).
• Example: wearable tech can “dehumanize users” (34).
• Example: disposability is “naturalized through texts and device design” – called “material rhetorics” (34) , resulting in “dematerialization.”
• Research possibility: “challenge how obsolescence gets naturalized through technologies with which many of us compose” (35).
• I wonder: Does this make us complicit when we teach using it?
• The impact on teaching – we should lead students to think about obsolescence critically (35). She argues that when we think of “the interface” offered by technology (like iPads?) as “boundary points” or “zones of activity” … “then we can situate writing in interfaces as part of the work of rematerializing the composing process as well as the bodily and sociohistorical settings for writing” to provide “insight into writing practices” and “writing as activity system[s]” a la Spinuzzi (35).

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