Post-Barton

Thank you all for a really interesting discussion of the article by Matt Barton. I realized a number of insights during our discussion, and made some interesting connections too. I'm going to discuss a few moments of our discussion and may even bring in names, so please excuse any misappropriation or omission of the discussion.

It's really fascinating to me to think about how Barton repeats some of the same moves made by Habermas in that he constructs this pre-corporate network culture that (may) have never existed. Aaron helped us along here, pointing out that, by the time most people had internet access, it was already subject to corporate hegemony. This articulation reminded me of a piece by Dennis Baron: "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology"  in which he theorizes that new (literacy) technologies are at first only available to a "priestly class":

Each new literacy technology begins with a restricted communications function and is available only to a small number of initiates. Because of the high cost of the technology and general ignorance about it, practitioners keep it to themselves at first -- either on purpose or because nobody else has any use for it -- and then, gradually, they begin to mediate the technology for the general public. The technology expands beyond this “priestly” class when it is adapted to familiar functions often associated with an older, accepted form of communication.

In Baron's assessment, however, once a technology becomes available beyond the priestly class, it can still be manipulated and directed in new, original ways. It's not limited to exclusive control by oppressive and hegemonic entities: 

As costs decrease and the technology becomes better able to mimic more ordinary or familiar communications, a new literacy spreads across a population. Only then does the technology come into its own, no longer imitating the previous forms given us by the earlier communications technology but creating new forms and new possibilities for communication. Moreover, in a kind of backward wave, the new technology begins to affect older technologies as well.

Sarah also provided a counterpoint to Aaron's articulation, pointing out that early users were often actually those that have been previously marginalized by other modes and venues of expression. I like to think of homeless schizophrenics making use of internet access in public libraries as the real "priestly class." Indeed, optimistic narratives of communications in network culture often describe online venues as places where traditionally marginalized voices can find voice. 

Identifying a pre-corporate network culture as inherently democratic is obviously problematic, but does it really matter? If discussion boards, blogs, and wikis do help to educate students to be active rhetors in online spaces, isn't that a sufficient rationale for their use? Of course, since this article was published, political activism and activity on the internet has increased dramatically. We can link web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wikis to these increases, but social media has played a role as well, as is evident in social media activity that coincided with the Arab Spring. In "Composing to Change Nations: Teaching New Media and the Arab Spring in FYC," Bryan Lutz extends the work of Barton and others by realizing the connections between blog technologies and social media:

[Blogs] can be used in partnership with other social media as conduits, allowing students to question the ethical stakes of an issue by allowing students to construct what the issues mean to them, as well as to become part of a global network of citizens who are arguing for the world they wish to see. When combined with critical engagement and access to the affordances of technology, this pedagogy has potential to allow students the opportunity to exonerate themselves from their positions as passive recipients of knowledge and as passive consumers of media and technology. ("Conclusion")

A final critique of the article by Barton I'd like to address is this idea that his argument suffers by the fact that he's arguing for the use of  blogs, wikis, and db's in a very traditional academic form that doesn't itself utilize those technologies. While I can sympathize with this argument, I think it's important to remember the exigencies and constraints operating in academic culture(s) that contribute to Barton's choice of form and medium. Academic hierarchies and promotion processes insist on perpetuating scholarship that panders to certain methods of knowledge production. Scholars interesting in disrupting these institutions have to work inside them in order to disrupt them I think, both in terms of reaching an (academic) audience, and perhaps in the case of  this article, securing a (tenured) position from which to continue the argument. In short, change  (at least in the initial stages) must come from within the institutions we seek to subvert.
Overall, our discussion of this article was productive and interesting. I like thinking about online writing technologies as readily accessible spaces in which to create and inhabit productive writing ecologies. If I could turn back the clock and change anything, it would be my own leadership of the discussion. I would have liked to structure the discussion in a way that would include more voices and also create opportunities for different interpretations and reactions to the work.