Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: This dissertation argues that speed characterizes the world of technology in the twenty-first century. The ideologies inherent in technologies have always been of enormous interest to historians, philosophers, and political scientists. More recently, due to the penetration of electronic technologies into the human cultural experience and, inevitably, into the composition and rhetoric classroom, English Studies scholars have begun to investigate this relationship as well. Although speed has been identified as one characteristic of the Internet era, I propose that it is instead foundational. As an historical review of the arrival of new technologies reveals, speed is inextricably connected to technology and to narratives of progress. Scholars interrogating speed, such as Virillio, Gurak, and Ericksen, have clustered at one of two ends of a response spectrum: speed is either good or bad. However, I argue for a more nuanced approach to understanding speed- and explore both the characteristics of a culture dominated by speed and the effects upon writing and the teaching of writing.
Author: Lewis, Lynn C.
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: University of Oklahoma
OpenAlex ID: W2306713015