The theme of "interconnectivity" draws primarily from
a definition of the Internet as "a vast network that connects
many smaller groups of linked computer networks, on and through which
information is stored and transmitted. The 'interconnected' character
of the Internet is one of the things that makes it so popular and
powerful in facilitating communication and electronic commerce"
(Fisher and Wang, online). I extend this notion of linking networks
to include books, concepts, ideas, and topics, similar to the way
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari refer to texts as machines. If a
book, as Deleuze and Guattari claim, is a "little" but literary
machine, the computer might also be considered a machine: perhaps
it is also an assemblage that connects with other assemblages; has
neither subject nor object but only itself; and is made of variously
formed matters,
dates, and speeds. In A Thousand Plateaus, both authors write
that "[i]n a book, as in all things, there are lines of
articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines
of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification,"
all of which quantify writing (p. 3, my emphasis). The "only
question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged
into, must be plugged into in order to work" (p. 4).
In using the term "interconnectivity,"
I am merely emphasizing a point that students most likely will have
discovered later in their academic careers: the more students read
and engage in various disciplines at the university, the more they
encounter similarities in ideas and concepts. I simply try to make
these relations manifest in my pedagogy largely through the
notion of an "interplay" of topics.
In the first two weeks of
the semester, we focus on three modes of communication--orality, literacy,
and post-literacy--and semiotics. We read Jay David Bolter's "The
Computer as a New Writing Space," a chapter in his book Writing
Space; three chapters from Jack Goody's Domestication of the
Savage Mind; Daniel Chandler's "Semiotics for Beginners";
and "Observing the Ordinary," in Donald McQuade and Christine
McQuade's Seeing & Writing. Via the readings, I introduce
topics ranging from anthropology, sociology, technology, semiotics,
and ideology. After we read and examine one text, I encourage students
to refer to the previous text(s). At the end of the two weeks, the
term "interconnectivity" begins to make more sense to the
students. My hope is that students will understand that while something
that one reads may not make sense initially or connect with any knowledge
that one already has, after further investigation and consideration,
we can expect the information that was previously under consideration
will make more sense, connect to other ideas, and find its place within
a topos.
My other goal in the first
two weeks is to express that stereotypes (i.e., ethnocentric binaries)
are constructed and reconstructed, that identities can be shifted
and re-presented, and that the computer space is one such place for
re-presenting identities. In a way, my second goal represents a reflexive
gesture, in that 1) we begin the semester thinking about the Internet
as a topos where interconnectivity occurs; 2) we extend the
notion of interconnectivity to print, where we invest our energies
in learning about classifications and hierarchies in language and
identities; then 3) we refer back to the Internet as a place where
we might begin to problematize those classifications by employing
both a more fluid writing medium (hypertext) and a personal style
of writing (mystory). In keeping with this reflexive gesture, allow
me to return to how we approach post-literacy
in the classroom.