After going through the three readings I tend to gravitate towards the writing in The Best Technology Writing 2009 and 2010. Janet H. Murray’s article, Inventing the Medium was much harder to grasp—in fact, out of the three selections, it was the only reading that I had to go over several times to retain even part of the information. The language here is much harder to understand, presenting the perspectives of engineers and humanists in the mid to late twentieth century—whereas the introductions by Julian Dibbell and Steven Johnson were much easier to understand and focused on past and present issues of technology.
Some of the main issues that were quite interesting to me were the regrettable effects of the shift to technology brought up by Nicholas Carr. I tend to agree with Carr, citing the fact that it has become much harder for me to concentrate on reading in long formats since a broadband connection was installed in my house. However, I do understand the opposite side of the argument in that it is necessary for us to develop the skill of “skim-and-plunge” mode. The problem with this mode is that it is very difficult when you find a subject in the article interesting that is not the topic matter that you need to be focusing your attention on.
Concerning the issue of writing itself, I tend to actually agree with the old perception that writing creates sort of a superficial form of knowledge—at least in some applications. Being a jazz musician it is necessary for us to memorize many musical pieces so that we are prepared when other musicians “call” tunes. Obviously, this does not apply to every musical situation but it is necessary if one is to focus mainly on the improvising aspect of the piece and not on the actual technicalities (what chord change is on this beat of the music, etc.).
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