4.1160 Technophobes and Writing (5/123)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 14 Mar 91 18:05:31 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 1160. Thursday, 14 Mar 1991.
(1) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 16:10:54 CST (13 lines)
From: Oliver Phillips <PHILLIPS@UKANVM>
Subject: Halio controversy?
(2) Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 17:42:06 EST (17 lines)
From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear <EDITORS@BROWNVM>
Subject: Halio Controversy on Humanist
(3) Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 11:31 EST (15 lines)
From: Matthew Wall <WALL@campus.swarthmore.edu>
Subject: On writing electronically
(4) Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 13:37:44 PST (52 lines)
From: "Arnie Keller, U of Victoria" <AKELLER@UVVM.UVic.CA>
Subject: Re: 4.1149 Technophobia Strikes Again (1/58)
(5) Date: Tue, 12 Mar 91 9:09:58 PDT (26 lines)
From: Fritz Levy <flevy@milton.u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: 4.1149 Technophobia Strikes Again (1/58)
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 16:10:54 CST
From: Oliver Phillips <PHILLIPS@UKANVM>
Subject: Halio controversy?
What was the Halio controversy?
I, too, mourned the passing of a free subscription to _Academic Computing_.
Oliver Phillips
PHILLIPS@UKANVM
Department of Classics
University of Kansas
Lawrence, Ks 66045-2139
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------20----
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 17:42:06 EST
From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear <EDITORS@BROWNVM>
Subject: Halio Controversy on Humanist
For those of you who are interested in the content of the "Halio
Controversy," I suggest you might request from listserv@brownvm the
logs for January 1990 -- HUMANIST LOG9001A through HUMANIST LOG9001E.
The syntax for retrieving files interactively is "tell listserv@brownvm
get humanist logxxxxx"; by mail, send mail to listserv@brownvm with no
subject line, and with the only content being "get humanist logxxxxx" .
If you need further assistance in retrieving the logs, please review the
Guide to Humanist.
Elaine
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------19----
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 11:31 EST
From: Matthew Wall <WALL@campus.swarthmore.edu>
Subject: On writing electronically
I realize I may be preaching to the converted, but I have to disagree
with Skip Knox that we should take articles like Mendelsohn's (and
Halios, et al) in stride. The problem is that your already technophobic
VP or head of a faculty committee just loves to leap on articles like
this, and say "hey, I told you so, so we don't really need all these new
computers for the academic mission of our college." Rebuttals are thus
painfully necessary.
- Matt Wall
Humanities Computing Coordinator
Swarthmore College
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------66----
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 13:37:44 PST
From: "Arnie Keller, U of Victoria" <AKELLER@UVVM.UVic.CA>
Subject: Re: 4.1149 Technophobia Strikes Again (1/58)
Mendelson's argument is remarkable for its silliness--as if pen and
paper never produced nonsense. (Did he write his piece on a
word-processor? Maybe he proved his case.) Of course, a word processor
is not magic machine; who said it was? I myself stopped believing in
elves somewhere in my mid-20Us so I'm not disappointed by the absence of
a little man inside my Mac. Even if word processing were hyped and
double hyped, no one has to believe that the thing will churn out great
prose; writing isn't sausage and so we can have no equivalents of
sausage-machines. But a word-processor is a useful tool, not
necessarily to make you write better (who wants to pronounce on what
that means?) but to let you write more efficiently. The hours I save
weekly may not be spent bringing peace to the Middle East, but I do save
them. That alone is reason to use word processors. That alone is
reason to give them to students.
The article Mendelson cites, by the way, on how Macs produced worse
prose is also silly and has been roundly condemned many places.. The
*study* was so poorly conceived as to be worthless. But Mendelson not
only grabs on to it, he sprints and stumbles; listen to him snarl about
*standard measures used in the statistical analyses of prose* that show
Mac users writing like 13 years olds. Can we think of anything more
mechanistic--soulless and machine like--that a slavish counting of
sentence length as an indicator of quality? (Poor Molly Bloom.) Good
for Mendelson that he can both count and speak ex cathedra
simultaneously. (A note: he gets his standards wrong to boot, since
most general interest magazines and newspapers quite consciously write
to a Grade 8 level (13 years olds) in the name of readability.)
What is finally disheartening about Mendelson is how little he regards
the writing process. His assumption apparently is that the tool or pen
or typewriter is all-- hence a bad tool inevitably condemns you to bad
writing. But where is the writer for Mendelson in all this, except for
being surprised by what the editor sends back? Where is the thinking,
the inventing, the drafting, the revising, and the editing,? Where does
he consider what makes writing supremely human--getting it going,
getting it down, getting it right, and finally, getting it out? I may
sit at the machine and stare into space, but it's still me and not Steve
Jobs doing the writing. When I write lots of bad sentences, it says
everything about me and nothing that I can think of about my writing
implement.
But who knows, maybe Mendelson just suffered a power spike and lost his
morning's work.
Arnie Keller
University of Victoria
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------111---
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 91 9:09:58 PDT
From: Fritz Levy <flevy@milton.u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: 4.1149 Technophobia Strikes Again (1/58)
I've not yet seen Edward Mendelson's article, but Willard McCarty's
note leaves me sceptical--about Mendelson, not McCarty. This same
Mendelson first wrote about the Pacman factor in a series of notable
reviews of word processing systems in the Yale Review, and the program
he praised most highly then was Nota Bene, which has the highest PMF of
all the programs reviewed. This same Mendelson also is a regular
contributor (indeed "Contributing Editor") to PC Magazine, where he
continues to praise Nota Bene, a program which remains the most
customizable of all the word processors. I've sometimes thought that
Mendelson's public praise is the single most notable factor keeping Nota
Bene alive. All of which, taken together, makes me wonder a little
about the TLS piece.
Having said that, the point remains. Like most of those writing with
word processors--and reading student papers composed on them--I've
wondered about the long-term effects. Admittedly, our predecessors made
the same comments about typewriters. Still, are we allowing our
McLuhanism to run rampant? Or is something real happening? Comments
welcome.
Fritz Levy