Still a Luddite, Maybe More So

My life here at this Ivy League school of some repute includes a LOT more technology than my previous years. When I was teaching high school, I did have computers around, but the bulk of my days included students, books, and lots of conversation. Old school. But now I've got to do research on the computer systems, my assignments are due through the internet, I (sadly) bought my first cell phone, technology in education inevitably comes up a lot . . . on and on.

But I'm still not convinced. Here's an example.

At first blush, it seems like it's a lot easier to write a paper with modern technology. I've got a computer, I can spell check, grammar check, find a quote online in seconds, juggle paragraphs and phrases with the click of a mouse, cut and paste to my heart's content. But I said things are easier with technology, and easier isn't the same as better. Like Wendell Berry says, he'll buy a computer for his own writing once someone surpasses Dante. Shakespeare wrote with a pen (or a quill and scroll or something). Some noticed that Nietzsche's writing declined once he put his pencil down and started to use a typewriter. Socrates was even worried about what would happen to our thinking once we shifted away from oral language and started to write things down in the first place.

So is my writing any better with all this technology? When you have to write with a pen, and it's a lot harder to go clean up a sentence (much less a paragraph) that you just wrote, does that mean you write more slowly, and craft your prose with more care? Does that have an overall effect?

Here's what I'm SURE used to happen when people wrote with pens and pencils: the used to sit for an extended period of time and get lost in their work. Now when I type a paper on my laptop, I type for 5 or 10 minutes, then I check my e-mail, then I write for another 5 minutes, then I check the score of the Bears game, then I write a little more, then I check out something on YouTube, etc., etc. I've asked other people if they do the same, including my whole philosophy class, and most everyone says yes. There's no doubt this is diminished thinking and diminished writing. On the rare occasion that I do attend to one topic for a protracted period of time, my brain begins to piece things together, my thoughts reach a much deeper and richer place, and I have a chance at getting somewhere original. No chance when I keep fracturing my thinking and writing with little detours to the internet.