Programming the Gesture of Writing: On the Algorithmic Paratexts of the Digital
Abstract
In the wake of the digital, some have recommended that we abandon the tedium of teaching handwriting to children in service of promoting “more creative” digital literacies. Others worry that an early diet of keyboard and screen may have deleterious effects on children's social, emotional, and cognitive development, as well as their physical well‐being. Yet in this debate, the algorithmic scripts and digital surfaces underwriting these new reading, writing, and mathematical practices are, with a few notable exceptions, almost exclusively ignored. In this essay, Catherine Adams asks whether the digital, and the reading and writing spaces it affords, are of consequence to our habits of thinking and ways of being, particularly in light of the possible obsolescence of pen and paper in schools. She shows that writing using a word processor is no mere mechanical pressing of keys, but an intricate ballet of writerly reading eyes and readerly writing hands, caught up in a dynamic environment of algorithmic paratexts and copy‐cut‐paste thinking.
Number of times cited: 6
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- Joris Vlieghe, Phenomenology of Digital Media, Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, 10.1007/978-981-287-588-4_90, (1795-1800), (2017).
- Catherine Adams and Terrie Lynn Thompson, Attending to Objects, Attuning to Things, Researching a Posthuman World, 10.1057/978-1-137-57162-5_2, (23-56), (2016).
- Catherine Adams and Terrie Lynn Thompson, Interviewing Objects as Co-researchers, Researching a Posthuman World, 10.1057/978-1-137-57162-5_4, (87-106), (2016).
- Catherine Adams and Terrie Lynn Thompson, Loosening the Meshwork, Analyzing Medialities and Materialities, Researching a Posthuman World, 10.1057/978-1-137-57162-5_3, (57-86), (2016).
