I'll begin my notes with where the author begins, that is, at the abstract: the author falls into a double bind of sorts by saying that "literacy educators [need] to resist the harnessing of literacy, communication, and pedagogy to market forces and exploitative corporate practices" (29), and that sounds great, right? (I'm suspicious of things that sound great, that sound enlightened.) But what she fails to realize in this opening moment is that the business of education, even or especially literacy education, is already subject to market demands, as the business of education is entirely commercial (with a few, very few, exceptions). So, we begin with a "straw man" of sorts that attempts to set up literacy education to resist something that it is very much already a part of. To me, there's no real reason to read on: the entire project is already fraught from the beginning. 

But I will press on. 

More to the author's main point (without my pompous nitpicking, if we want to call it that), the fact that technology changes so quickly can create a series of problems for educators, especially those who come through the formal channels of undergraduate education programs; how could they ever keep up? How can students afford the latest and greatest software programs? How can institutions afford this without forcing students into more debt in order to pay for it? I tend not to use rhetorical questions in my writing, but whatever, here are some: most people seem to like them, so enjoy. 

The author of course is right to point out that this is an entirely commercial process, regardless of how it is sold to educators or institutions, so we must be very careful. I'm on an LMS Review Task Force right now, and we've been working for 7 months now to determine whether we want to stay with Blackboard as our LMS or switch to something different, and these companies come in and present, offer us very carefully worded RFP responses, and really try to "sell" us in manipulative ways. It's about business, although, to a certain extent, the College (like all colleges and universities) want the best in order to obtain and retain students (like commodities), even if that's not how the professors at those institutions feel. 

I found the division between "technological obsolescence," "psychological obsolescence," and "planned obsolescence" to be very interesting. I had only thought of the first and the third of these in the past, but the second is particularly interesting; obviously, I was aware of this, but I didn't relate it to obsolescence. I like Madden's invitation that "writing teachers can invite students to reflect on how obsolescence shapes their writing practices as well as its influence on literacy education" (35). That seems profitable, and these sorts of conversations about design and software need to happen not only among professors and literacy experts, as Madden expresses on her last page, but also with students. We rarely bring students into these conversations, and they should be brought in.