Page 152 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of the New Media on Writing Assessment

HOT AMD COOL TECHNOLOGIES 119

tional contexts, or concludes a discussion. For networked conversa-
tions, phatic communication is used to encourage postings or longer
term discussions on a topic.
Instead of instructors imposing reasons for communicating with
others, cool technologies depend on each writer seeking out the need
to make linguistic contact with others. This is one reason why so
many of our students' postings to lists or blogs display greater
amounts of phatic communication compared with what instructors
might want or hope for in a traditional classroom discussion. Cool
technologies require individual writers to "restore the functional
possibility of communication" and "to inject contact, establish con-
nections, and speak tirelessly simply in order to render language
possible" (McLuhan, 1964, p. 164). As a result, the phatic discourse
structures help students move into networked discussions or writ-
ing. This type of communication lessens the possibility for spectacle
occurring as well, because students are constructing an environ-
ment that adapts to their use of language.
The potential for spectacle also diminishes with the use of cool
technology because monitor screens, terminals, laptops, and the like
distance writers from the immediacy of writing on paper (the modu-
lation that Baudrillard, 1990, addressed). These effects reduce the at-
tention connected to the writer's use of language. Along with
providing their words, writers using cool technologies can provide
different viewpoints by adding images, hyperlinks, movie or video
clips, or audio sound bites to adjust a reader's perceptions. The
stakes in evaluation seem less significant with cool technologies be-
cause the writer's words alone are not being judged—the writer's
words are always connected to other textual elements that mediate
the response. As a result, cool technologies allow the writer to al-
ways be in collaboration with another writer or reader. Further-
more, as we have seen since the mid-1990s, networked writing
knows neither cultural nor political boundaries in their traditional
forms, so there is little concern with vernacular versus "proper " lan-
guage use. All that becomes important is the infinite exchange of
ideas and information among participants.
Writing with computers, then, becomes a ludic event, that is, a
"play of models with their ever-changing combinations" where all
combinations "can act as counter-evidence" for what is written and
communicated (Baudrillard, 1990, p. 157). If writing specialists
adapt Baudrillard's observations to the use of technologies in Com-