7. Comparing Digital and Print Texts
In his article entitled “The Shape of Text to Come,” Stephen A. Bernhardt outlines nine dimensions of on-screen texts that distinguish them from traditional print texts: on-screen texts are situationally embedded, interactive, functionally mapped, modular, navigable, hierarchically embedded, spacious, graphically rich, and customizable and publishable. He argues that understanding these dimensions of on-screen texts is the first step in analyzing the new ways in which readers interact with those text and, subsequently, in teaching new strategies for reading and writing in the digital age.
I definitely agree with Bernhardt that defining the characteristics of digital texts can be beneficial to understanding the genre; I found the majority of this article, the parts that made unbiased assessments of the dimensions of digital texts, to be informative and insightful. I found there to be several instances, however, in which Bernhardt seems to covertly make the argument that digital texts have some inherent value beyond that of print texts because of those dimensions. Bernhardt makes several claims in this article that seem to validate the worth of digital texts by diminishing the value of print text: “writers of print material cannot force the interaction, they can only invite it,” (413) “readers of novels are constrained by the linearity of the text,” (413) “the traditional cues of paper texts–margins, indents, paragraphs, page numbers–appear impoverished next to the rapidly expanding set of cues that facilitate functional writing and reading on screen,” (416) etc.
Throughout this article, it seems like what started out as a list of characteristics of digital texts in comparison to print texts morphed into a list of advantages of digital texts in comparison to print texts. I don’t find a list like this to be particularly useful, especially to students, on its own; it would be useful, however, to compare the rhetorical situations in which digital texts would be more appropriate than print texts (and vice versa) based on the textual affordances and constraints of each genres. In Nicholas Carr’s article in The Atlantic entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Carr explains the benefits of the deep thinking that print, not digital, texts produce:
The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading . . . is indistinguishable from deep thinking. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with ‘content,’ we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves but in our culture. (par. 30-31)
I absolutely think that technical writing students could benefit from analyzing the various situations in which this deep thinking outlined by Carr would be more advantageous than the thought produced by interactive, modular, layered texts of digital genres.
Again, I found the majority of Bernhardt’s article to be quite innovative (for its time) and still relevant today. I don’t think Berhardt’s intention was to favor digital texts over print texts, but his examples, at times, did just that. When paired with another article that outlines the strengths of print genres, this article has the potential to initiate an important conversation in the technical writing classroom. I think it’s much more productive for students and professionals of technical communication in the digital age to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both digital and print genres of text rather than focusing solely on the strengths of one of the genres. In my opinion, we can best use critical analyses of the genres (like the dimensions of digital texts presented in Bernhardt’s article) to successfully identify the rhetorical situations in which one of the genres is more advantageous than the other.
Works Cited
Bernhardt, Stephen A. “The Shape of Text to Come.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eiola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 410-427. Print.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic Aug. 2008. Web. 7 Oct. 2012.