Cynthia Selfe in her essay "Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution" talks about the effects that technology has on the world. She talks about three narratives that Americans believe when it comes to technology. Those of which being: "The Global Villiage," "Land of Equal Opportunity," and "The Un-Gendered Utopia." Selfe compares these narratives into their true form on our sociey and calls them, "The Electronic Colony," "Land of Difference," and "The Same Old Gendered Stuff." In her essay Selfe claims that, "Computers, in other words, are complexly socially determined artifacts that interact with existing social formations and tendencies-including sexism,classism, and racism-to contribute to the shaping of a gendered utopia." (page 306) Basically by this she explains that through cultural beliefs, out technology shows the hypocracy of the whole system. People say that technology is curing all those problems in the by creating a "Global Villiage", it is quite obvious that it is the opposite of all it says it is. Selfe used advertisements to show how the changes haven't occurred, and how they don't fail to show difference races in them and the more underpriviliged people. According to Selfe if we are going to allow technology to give us an equal playing field, we need to include all the groups of people in America today and not only focus on the privilaged few.
Selfe claims, "That America is the land of opportunity only for some people" The evidence that shes used to back this claim up is the history of slavery and deaf education, womans sufferage, immigration, and labor unions. she says that all these remind us of this fact that only the more priviliged people get more opportunities than the underprivileged people.
Another claim that Selfe makes is that ,"We tell ourselves in connection with computers and change focuses on equity, opportunity, and access-all characteristics ascribed to the electronic landscape we have constructed on the internet and the computer use in general." she says that this landscape, or so we life to believe, is open to everyone no matter what the gender, race, class or connection is. Later in her essay though she proves that this land if equal opportunity is not exactly open to everyone, but more so just to the more priviliged people in the world.
Welcome!
Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversations Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
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