While reading Arola’s essay and her preoccupation with digital design and cultural materiality, I recalled Liboiron’s Pollution is Colonialism and how she also uses the metaphor of “Land” to agitate for cultural sensitivity. The two scholars tend to metaphorize “Land” as a cultural symbol of both the material and immaterial, including humans whose identities are…
I don’t think I’ve ever thought of all the ills connected to “the environmental unconscious of digital composing” until I read these articles. Each word added flesh and bones to my ignorance, and then ignorance turned to guilt, and guilt to perplexities. And then I could not stop thinking about how many people are actually…
In response to Hayles, Ed Folsom discusses the interplay of narrative and database, noting that the most powerful narratives become like databases in themselves, their plethora of meanings and throughways—like the Garden of Forking Paths—always exceeding any singular account/interpretation. Notably, Hayles positions narrative as a potential “common ground between hyper and deep attention” (197). If…
In reading Rivers, I cannot shake the image of the Nine of Swords; the messenger of the Tarot to say that something is uneasy, or perhaps one has been “tossed around by world” (57). I believe a throughline in Rivers’ piece is that in the act of consensual attention, we take up a certain degree…
Hayles’ “Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes” in the context of teaching first-year can be used as a pedagogical tool to paying attention to students with neurodiverse needs. Crafting Writing prompts and fostering interactions in the kairotic space (classroom) demands deep attention from students and both teachers. This approach recognizes the diverse cognitive modes of learners,…
My scholarship attends to ghosts. By this I don’t mean looking for literal specters (can the ontologically unconfirmed even be considered “literal”—and if not, what does that mean for the unseen?), but taking stock of the ways our bodies, discourses, histories, and narratives are haunted by other(ed) ways of knowing, being, and doing that have…
A student recently accused me of not replying to “any” of her emails, when I had only not responded to a singular one that I had addressed in another email. This is just an itsy bitsy of all the entitlements that come with technological consensus. It’s my email (or any messaging app), yes, but the…
Hayles’ article was written before the arrival of Generation Alpha, children born into and existing in an age where hyper-attention is at its peak. I would really love to see an article that continues that conversation. I am a mom of two Alphas, and Lord help me with the daily policies and struggles with technology….
Consent and Zooming/Zoomers–11/05/2023 In reading Hayles’ and Rivers’ pieces for this week, I am reminded of how different our experiences of attention are post-COVID-19, and the way that consent factors into this. When Rivers writes about, as he calls it, the “moment of capture,” he is writing before a time when all of our attention…
I was thinking of one of the questions proposed in class for the blog carnival as telling a story of recent repairs, and I could not get my mind off repair as “rejection”. This repair includes interactions with physical and digital things and non-things, with me as the hub at the center. I have had…