On Cynthia Selfe's Concept of "Paying Attention"

Cynthia Selfe's essay, "Technology and Literacy: The Perils of Not Paying Attention," was very interesting and thought-provoking. Her thesis is right on the money, although I'm not as certain about the appropriateness of her "doomsday" tone. For the most part, it was very well-written; I agreed with many of her arguments. However, there were a few parts that lost me.

I completely agree with Selfe when it comes to the necessity for English Professors, Writing teachers,and others to "pay attention" to technology. She argues that academics in the Humanities, particularly English and related fields, regard technology merely as a "tool" to be used or ignored according to one's pedagogical/technological preferences. Either option leads to the same result: willful ignorance of the social, cultural, and economic contexts of technology when framed as a literacy (i.e. the consequences when society formally or informally rewards/punishes people for their ability/inability to use computer technology). This willful ignorance amounts to a tacit acceptance and support of the current status quo, which consists of rampant racial and social inequality in terms of access to technology and concomitant economic opportunity. The point of technology literacy programs, Selfe reminds us, is to enhance peoples' educational and economic prospects. If people are denied technology literacy because of social or racial factors, then they are necessarily denied educational and economic opportunities due to those same factors. Unless we are aware of the many implications of technology as literacy, we cannot positively influence the societal impacts of technology literacy. And we cannot be aware of these implications if we view technology merely as a pedagogical or money-saving tool--that is, if we do not pay attention to technology's social and cultural impacts.

While reading the essay, it is tempting to dismiss the seriousness of Selfe's claims because the "doomsday" tone makes the reader feel as though she's stating, "Unless we fix our understanding of technology literacy, Western civilization will crumble within a decade!" It's hard to think technology plays such a powerful, potentially dangerous role in society. Yet Selfe points out that technology is most dangerous when it becomes so widespread and pervasive that it "disappears." I realized that part of my urge to dismiss her claims resulted from the camoflauge of technology. Cell phones, computers, and other devices are so common that it's hard to remember when they didn't exist. It's also hard to realize just how much they've changed society until you step back and really think about it.

I'm still not entirely sure, based on Selfe's arguments, whether the racial and social gaps in technology access are caused by the conception of technology literacy and/or by academics "not paying attention." Her facts about school funding/technology inequities are dead-on, but I think these disparities are more the result of a couple decades of "White Flight" and urban degeneration and the inevitable inequality of funding schools through property taxes. If more white people have more access to technology than blacks or latinos, I am hesitant to blame this solely on a lack of "critical technology literacy" on the part of society/academics. I think the culprit lies with the way we fund public schools, the greater access to private schools and home-based technologies afforded upper-class people, and other social factors. Selfe's argument starts to break down when she narrows the issue to concepts of technological literacy and ignores even larger political, economic, social, and cultural trends. For instance, she argues that the technology literacy program instituted by Clinton and Gore was designed to produce a self-fueling economic engine driven by a highly technologically literate segment of society and a highly technologically illterate segment. But this just doesn't make sense. If the goal is creating a large market, then why create a system dependent on excluding some from that market? Further, I do not see why low-paid, low-skilled labor is essential to providing the excess labor necessary to fuel technology economy. It seems that high-skilled, high-paid labor is the only requisite.

That said, Selfe's overall point is a good one. We should pay more critical attention to literacy. However, I am not as quick to foretell doomsday.