Tracy Liu

Unit 1

Printing continues to stay important as a transitioning tool while society continues to

explore the opportunities and shortcomings of new technology for education and learning. To
best outline these considerations, it is necessary to understand three facts: first is how previous
dominant educational tools were reconfigured with the introduction of the next tool; second is
pointing out known issues so far with digital formats; and finally that print will continue to
endure so long as the previous issues exist.
To start, history has shown clearly that throughout the various ages, the previous
mechanisms that society utilized to exchange knowledge and communicate didn’t suddenly
disappear. Robert Darnton’s article points out and corrects a common misconception that has
made its way into the common vernacular about how “the future is digital” (and hence
non-digital items are somehow irrelevant). The fact is that “manuscript publishing actually
expanded after Gutenberg and continued to thrive for 3 decades. Radio did not destroy the
newspaper, television didn’t kill the radio, and the internet did not make TV extinct” and in fact,
the introduction of each new tool resulted in “the information environment [becoming] richer
and more complex. An example of this phenomenon in Out of Print are libraries that were
transforming from places of just books to meeting places. Interestingly this concept reflects the
initial envisioned idea of the library in Greek times where it was a place people gathered and
openly discussed ideas.
In examining the value that our educational technology tools have brought, there are a lot
of reasons to be wary of overly investing in just education technology. To start, it is important to
acknowledge the difference in cognitive load that current academic scholars and senior students
carry in learning new technologies. We were trained in a different method of learning that did not
involve a screen. This is what Alison Gopnik describes when she answers the Edge interview
question on whether the internet changes the way she thought. She says the internet “has made
my experience more fragmented [...] because I have mastered the Internet as an adult. Universal
literacy and education have only been around for a hundred years or so.because, for adults,
learning a new technology depends on conscious, attentive, intentional processing.” This is in
contrast to the generation of children after the 2010s in Out of Print that have primarily learned
through the screen: it's automatic to them. Yet there is evidence that suggests we need to be more
critical about how we are learning. Neil Selwyn points out that “inherent positivity has become
an all-encompassing - if not hegemonic - feature of educational technology scholarship” to
which he later observes that “most people working in the field are so convinced of the benefit of
technology education that they are unwilling to think otherwise.” This is problematic as this may
present blinders on real issues that arise with these new tools. According to Darnton, there are
estimated to be 130 million books in existence in the world with only 15 million of them
digitized. Already there is considerable rich literature that is lost to those that rely exclusively on
the internet. To further complicate matters are copyright issues involved with texts going digital
as evidenced in the film with the Google Books Library project. Finally, there is the question of
longevity of certain digital formats; according to the US National Archives (2007) the average
lifespan of a CD/DVD is 2 to 5 years in the film. These examples engender further skepticism as
it isn’t clear that an infrastructure is in place for managing the wide array of electronic formats.
So long as the aforementioned questions of how to more critically examine the value and
impact of digital technologies exist, print will still play a critical role in facilitating the successes
of new tools on the horizon. As we currently go through an interesting time of education during a
worldwide pandemic, there will no doubt be even more expectations on investing in more
educational technology. In fact, it is necessary to create new tools in order to progress. Nicholas
Carr said that “the written word liberated knowledge from the bounds of individual memory and
freed language [...] it opened to the mind broad new frontiers of thought and expression.” Until
we have a better understanding of the best ways to preserve or transfer knowledge, all the tools
will be used in concert with one another to deliver knowledge to society.