Home » special topics and responses » analogue versus digital

A freshman came up to me in a coffee shop . . .

I was grading in a cafe and a lovely, although quite young, man came up to me and put forth his attempt at small talk. He complimented my grading style (creepy reaindg over the shoulder is a ourtship ritual, I keep forgetting) and I directed him to the writing lab. He said one thing that really intersted me, however: he complimented me on my use of a grade book rather than an Exel spreadsheet.

For a moment I stared at my gradebook wondering what exactly it is about this technology that I so cling to. I didn't think to laud the portability and convenience of the book. I told him that a gradebook, unlike a spreadsheet, has history. I can see where I changed grade and where I didn't.

While digital technology certainly provides us with this option, it an addition that has to imagined and created. Like all adjustments in digital media, it is always only exactly what you tell it to be, exactly what is articulatable. Language. Again.

And here's how I worded in a thread that L started elsewhere:
Digital information is not eternal. It's insufficient as a means of preservation for a number of reasons - file formats have to be compatable and software/hardware is rarely made backwards compatable. Also, digital information is fragile. A scratch on a CD can wipe-out a whole encyclopedia. One unit of binary code being unreadable can domino-out an enormous amount of information.

Most importantly, only one version of the truth can be preserved. There's no room for ambiguity. Certainly, a digital text can acknowledge other possibilities, even present them alongside one another, but there is no borderland, no undefined, no queer information. There are official positions, nurmous as they may be. An anologue text can physically register ambiguity.

But that's just my soapbox of the hour.

Submitted by Adryan on Tue, 2007-02-27 10:59.
Adryan's blog

Digital Information and Archival Reliability
rhetoricat's picture
Submitted by rhetoricat on Tue, 2007-02-27 18:28.

I find your points compelling, Adryan. It's true that a gradebook (or a handwritten journal as a more personal example) has a kind of attraction for us but I think that our affinity for print may be different from that of our students. I grew up surrounded by books. They were my primary source of information until college (even my journal research involved driving to Columbia and spending hours and hours tracking down articles in the stacks) and I loved them. I still do, although I do appreciate the portability of electronic texts. In fact, I appreciate their reliability. My laptop is almost always with me. I can access my writing and resources saved on my computer. With an internet connection and my subscription to a full-text internet library, I have access to more resources than I could ever possibly carry around with me. I love it. I feel a sense of freedom in being able to do my work anywhere.

I also am comforted by what I see as digital reliability. Sure, computers have problems, but when backed up appropriately and frequently the chance of losing material is much less. Learning the tools of various software programs, I am also able to save multiple copies and even to see changes chronologically documented, which you seem to recognize when you say "a digital text can acknowledge other possibilities, even present them alongside one another." Sure it's different from scratched out text, but I like that. So, I have to challenge the claim that "only one version of the truth can be preserved." This might change after you answer the following question: what do you mean by "there is no borderland, no undefined, no queer information"? Or perhaps, what is the borderland, the undefined, the queer information of the physical/analogue text? I think you've raised an interesting point and I'd like to continue discussing it.

~Cat


Digital egalitarianism is a lie?
Adryan's picture
Submitted by Adryan on Thu, 2007-03-01 09:37.

Not a coherent point, but I'll throw this out - when a digitial text presents alternative truths, those truths, while perhaps tagged as minority opinions, are presented as physically equivilent (made up of the same dots and dashes) while an analogue text can physically represent the "marginal" (great term, don't you think?) status of some opinions.

What I mean by the borderland, undefined or queer would be the possibilities that occur outside of the structure. Digital texts can only exist because someone structured them. Thier structures can be creatively reinvisioned, surely, but it's still within the same rules of opperation that had to be programed into the structure. The likelihood of a radical truth which challenges the structure itself is scoffably minor.

Now, I'm aware that hte binary between digital and analogue is slippery at best. What I percieve as a radical challenge is still playing some sort of rules of intelligibility. but as long as we're able to use the distinction to designate the digital text as superior, I think it's important to find ways to undermine that heirarchy within the binary. Like allow gender-essentializing so long as the "feminine" is undervalued even though my end goal would be to liberate the "feminine" from it's limits as a gendered stereotype.


Interesting
Ryan's picture
Submitted by Ryan on Tue, 2007-02-27 11:04.

My students don't know anything about my grading process, but I always imagine that if they did they would be pleased I was using an Excel spreadsheet. It is much more reliable, both in readability and mathematics, and makes it seem more like a computer is concluding your grade, which seems more objective. I realize that these notions aren't always true, but I think they would satisfy my students.


When is a composition grade objective?
Adryan's picture
Submitted by Adryan on Tue, 2007-02-27 11:13.

Does digitizing a subjectively determined grade make it less subjective? Do our students really fall for that?