Tech and Writing all twisted together

It doesn't seem possible to divorce technology from writing because the form that writing takes depends on the technology of the community in a large way.

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In class, we discussed the possibility of how literacy can alter the consciousness of a human person, allowing that individual to engage with the text, and perhaps even develop an "inner voice." While I'm not sure how convincing that argument is,when technology changes, writing changes along with it. In a primarily oral culture, characters have to be representational of an idea because holding a full, complex character without any sort of record-permanence, is incredibly difficult. Adding more than one might be impossible to remember. By making marks, the task of "memory" is left up to something inanimate, freeing up headspace to develop more complex characters and situations.

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I think that I would like to focus on the access that new technology seems to allow in writing. New technology, at least in the way I understand it, has made reading and writing more accessible to the general public. Whether computers or simple changes in the paper making process, advances in technology seem to open writing up for those who might not have been able to access it.

And it seems like there has to be some sort of symbiotic relationship here, right? Like sharks and remoras? Writing depends on and shifts with technology, but does technology depend on writing? Maybe not necessarily (so maybe writing is the remora, and technology is the shark?), but if we shift writing out to mean some sort of non-oral communication, I think we can make that sort of conclusion.

New technology doesn't just kind of appear from the shadows, and then we adapt our lives to use the tech. But usually it seems that tech rises to fill some sort of want or need. We need to communicate faster, so we "find" the telegraph. The telephone doesn't let us anonymously write hateful comments at celebrities / friends / family / coworkers. So we started using the internet, right?

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I keep thinking about it, and I can't separate tech and writing. And I'm still struggling to try and figure out how technology affects how I want to teach and write. The way technology seems to keep everything brief seems important. A few months ago, my friend L. and I were discussing Twitter and how she used it in a business sense. At the time, she was interviewing people to take over a business communications / media writing job, and one of her talking points was Twitter. She needed to know if they could use Twitter in an effective way. Not just because she thought that the program / site / utility was that important, but it was an easy, relevant way to judge whether or not a candidate could communicate effectively while still being incredibly brief -- because people tend not to pay attention to large blocks of text of they can help it. "TL:DR" gets slapped on to any comment / story that goes on for more than a few paragraphs.

(I realize that this is probably starting to approach the TL:DR category, so I'll wrap it up in a second.)

Technology shifts allow readers to dismiss an article if it's simply too much work to read. Consumers want bite-sized summaries that outline what they need to know quickly. And if the source they have doesn't give it to them, there are thousands of other easy-to-access sources they can navigate to in seconds.