“Computers and writing seems engaged less in defining itself in accord with a humanistic model based in passive reception of immutable truths/texts and more on figuring out how to develop in students a sense of robust, active rhetorical agency in the media of the day by working in and with those media. New media and computer technology present a broader palette of rhetorical choices than anything the literate world has ever seen. Recognition of these technologies as actively participating in and shaping the enactment of humanistic values and practices are central to this obligation. For English, the technologies associated with writing and rhetorical activity have rarely been at issue—the pen, paper, the typewriter, the pencil all mere implements, invisible and taken for granted. But due to the dynamism of electronic writing space and the range of human behaviors occurring in that space, computers and writing has never and can never situate technology similarly. For computers and writing, the technology question must be married to the humanistic question.” (102)
“In sum, Selber’s (2004) argument for robust multiliteracy is prompted by any number of legitimate motivations for shifting English studies’ sense of responsibility toward electronic space and technology literacy. It is also made possible by a changing humanistic climate, not only the evolution of the humanities themselves but a culture and economy that value electronic multiliteracy and a higher education climate that values institutional responsiveness to the professional and technological forces giving shape to the marketplace. In the latter, institutions of higher learning are obligated to prepare students for the demands of the workplace and the polis as part of their mission and responsibility to students and, in many cases, taxpaying citizens. A passive humanities that privileges textual consumption at the expense of production survives only on borrowed time. An active humanities that accommodates production and recognizes the literacy practices of the historical moment necessarily privileges study of writing technologies in a way that the English humanities as we know them have never before engaged.” (103)
In a compelling historical review of the literature, Knievel describes how computers and writing has challenged and organized itself in relation to the concept of humanism. Like technical communication, its close sibling, the relationship between humanism and computers is an organizing principle for the field and how it defines itself in the larger context of the academy and--specifically--of English studies. From the beginning, Kneivel notes, “efforts to forge a bond between technology and humanities have proved challenging” (93). Computers and writing has historically been doubly marginalized--not only is it a development of an already marginalized discipline called composition, but it is even worse unconcerned at all with the belletristic (i.e. literary) aspects of computing and texts. As part of the threatening “instrumental world of technology and science” (95), computers and writing has historically be unconventionally humanistic--dealing with the core ideas of humanism, but challenging the hegemony of literary studies’ concepts of consumption of text, textual/cultural permanence, ethics, and authorship. Today, Knievel argues, computers and writing challenges the very definition of a “humanistic concern” (99) in its total inversion of conversion by production--C&W makes the case that it is production that is deeply humanistic, and a focus on consumption is jarringly unethical in the changed paradigms of multiliteracy, read/write knowledge culture, and expanded notions of text in digital arenas. Though it is unlikely that we will soon embrace the term “posthuman”, computers and writing is certainly refashioning humanism into a post-literary and post-Arnoldian version of humanism: “computers and writing has quietly relocated itself from a shadowy position peripheral to the humanistic conversation and asserted a position firmly within it” (103). Though we must still--because our institutions are old-fashioned--answer the question “what’s so humanistic about computers and writing, Knievel predicts a time near in the future where the version of humanities that this discipline presents is increasingly legitimized inside the academy
