Wells.+Technology,+Genre,+and+Gender

=Wells, Susan. "Technology, Genre, and Gender: The Case of Power Structure Research."= //Rhetoric and Technologies: New Directions in Writing and Communication//. Ed. Stuart A. Selber. University of South Carolina P: South Carolina, 2010. Print.

=Abstract= No abstract.

=Argument=

Wells outlines the relationship between technology and its impact on human behavior. Do humans change with technology? Or does technology control how humans change? Wells argues that technology "affords" what people are able to do - it "affords" options. But regardless of what people are able to do, technology is still inhabited and controlled by human behavior, and is therefore the product of human decision, not just technology's existence.

=Key Passages=

"'Affordance' is a term used and disputed in science and technology studies. Imported from psychology, it was invented by James Gibson to describe relationships between and environment and an animal: 'the affordances of the environment are what it //offers// the animal, what it //provides// or //furnishes//, either for good or ill.'"

"...the affordances of technology and genre serve as reflexive representations of each other to readers and writers."

"These technologies, particularly offset printing, afforded new practices of publication: collaboration, work by amateurs, quick and easy reproduction of images."

"For the movements of the 1960s, which faced chronic shortages of money, the cheapness and ease of offset printing were critical. But these affordances also translated into social practices of accessibility and conviviality. The technology of offset printing did not determine the practices of the alternative press: in another setting, another culture, cheapness and ease could have afforded a relegation of layout and printing to the lowest levels of a rigid hierarchy. Because the alternative press valued spontaneity and experimentation, they developed differently ."

"For example, in his genre analysis of blogging, Lucas Graves observes, 'In some sense, a genre is a set of affordances, the communicative template that results when culture renders technological possibility.'"

"Both books demonstrated, in their material features and the texture of their writing, that publication, like the performance of music, could become something that groups of friends undertook as a project: a quick convivial movement from the typewriter to the printed page, rather than a solitary, multiyear, life-defining project."

"Do vernacular digital media, unlike alternative publications of the 1960s, have affordances that will sustain them after an initial flush of enthusiasm?"

"This history richly demonstrates that, although different media and genres offer different affordances, material affordances do not determine how writers and readers will deploy technologies or genres ."

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