Julie Platt (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} juliesstudyhall) wrote,@ 2006-11-06 20:42:00 |
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Week Eight: The Cyborg History Strikes Back
I was looking over Inman's Chapter 3 again, and one thing that struck me was his mentioning of the different ways of reading text on-screen rather than on the paper page. He mentions traditional Korean script, which is read vertically from right to left. I believe this is similar to reading Mandarin Chinese. Different writing systems pose different challenges for composition in the digital environment. This catapulted me into thinking about my Taiwanese friend, Cindy, and my trips to Asia. What would her technology narrative be like, and what might mine be like if I go back to Taiwan?
Cindy became my roommate in fall of 1999 when she was an exchange student to Saint Vincent College from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei. It was not her first time in the United States or any English-speaking country, for that matter; she had lived for a year in Arizona and for two years in New Zealand. She spoke fluent English with a moderate accent. Her college program of study was English.
One of the classes she took at SVC was publication production, which she told me she disliked greatly. As I reflect on why she might have disliked it, I wonder if it wasn't because she felt culturally alienated from that kind of multi-modal composing when it took place in another country, in another language setting, on another kind of keyboard. Maybe that wasn't the case, but her background certainly must have affected the way she came to technology and the way she used it in the US, in New Zealand, and in Taiwan.
When I went to Taiwan in 2000 to visit Cindy and tour the island, I wasn't sure what to expect from a "Chinese keyboard." Because Mandarin is made up of 5,000 to 40,000 characters representing words rather than an alphabet of 26 letters, I half-wondered if the keyboard would have 5,000 buttons (I found out later that early Chinese computers had thousands of buttons). When I saw Cindy's computer, it looked almost exactly like an English keyboard, but with many more symbols on the buttons. Most Chinese-writing individuals use an input method editor. If you type out your word in pinyin (the way that Chinese characters are transliterated into English) it appears on the screen in Mandarin characters. But there's quite a bit of modification that has to happen to get it there. Also, keyboards vary from country to country (a Hong Kong keyboard is different from a Taiwanese keyboard) and the various transliteration systems produce...well, variations.
It's amazing to me how even technoliteracy in Mandarin is dependent on literacy in English. I felt strangely ashamed of myself when looking at that keyboard. Those early Chinese computers with thousands of buttons...does technology privilege an alphabet? It seems to now, but maybe when voice-recognition software becomes more sophisticated things will be different. Or maybe not...technology is risky. Right now it can go either way: it can reinscribe opressive attitudes and assumptions, or help liberate.
If I return to Taiwan to teach English, as I'm considering doing right now, how will my own technology narrative change? Will I remain isolated from the technology narratives of the native Taiwanese, or will I join them? Many foreigners in Taiwan live in so-called "foreign ghettoes" and have little to no contact with the Taiwanese people. I don't want to inhabit a "technology ghetto," using only US-based English and Anglophone technology and websites, but I fear I might end up doing so. When so many people are willing to step outside their native tongue and speak English to you just because you're white, it's both incredibly necessary and incredibly hard to leave your comfort zone.
I was looking over Inman's Chapter 3 again, and one thing that struck me was his mentioning of the different ways of reading text on-screen rather than on the paper page. He mentions traditional Korean script, which is read vertically from right to left. I believe this is similar to reading Mandarin Chinese. Different writing systems pose different challenges for composition in the digital environment. This catapulted me into thinking about my Taiwanese friend, Cindy, and my trips to Asia. What would her technology narrative be like, and what might mine be like if I go back to Taiwan?
Cindy became my roommate in fall of 1999 when she was an exchange student to Saint Vincent College from Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei. It was not her first time in the United States or any English-speaking country, for that matter; she had lived for a year in Arizona and for two years in New Zealand. She spoke fluent English with a moderate accent. Her college program of study was English.
One of the classes she took at SVC was publication production, which she told me she disliked greatly. As I reflect on why she might have disliked it, I wonder if it wasn't because she felt culturally alienated from that kind of multi-modal composing when it took place in another country, in another language setting, on another kind of keyboard. Maybe that wasn't the case, but her background certainly must have affected the way she came to technology and the way she used it in the US, in New Zealand, and in Taiwan.
When I went to Taiwan in 2000 to visit Cindy and tour the island, I wasn't sure what to expect from a "Chinese keyboard." Because Mandarin is made up of 5,000 to 40,000 characters representing words rather than an alphabet of 26 letters, I half-wondered if the keyboard would have 5,000 buttons (I found out later that early Chinese computers had thousands of buttons). When I saw Cindy's computer, it looked almost exactly like an English keyboard, but with many more symbols on the buttons. Most Chinese-writing individuals use an input method editor. If you type out your word in pinyin (the way that Chinese characters are transliterated into English) it appears on the screen in Mandarin characters. But there's quite a bit of modification that has to happen to get it there. Also, keyboards vary from country to country (a Hong Kong keyboard is different from a Taiwanese keyboard) and the various transliteration systems produce...well, variations.
It's amazing to me how even technoliteracy in Mandarin is dependent on literacy in English. I felt strangely ashamed of myself when looking at that keyboard. Those early Chinese computers with thousands of buttons...does technology privilege an alphabet? It seems to now, but maybe when voice-recognition software becomes more sophisticated things will be different. Or maybe not...technology is risky. Right now it can go either way: it can reinscribe opressive attitudes and assumptions, or help liberate.
If I return to Taiwan to teach English, as I'm considering doing right now, how will my own technology narrative change? Will I remain isolated from the technology narratives of the native Taiwanese, or will I join them? Many foreigners in Taiwan live in so-called "foreign ghettoes" and have little to no contact with the Taiwanese people. I don't want to inhabit a "technology ghetto," using only US-based English and Anglophone technology and websites, but I fear I might end up doing so. When so many people are willing to step outside their native tongue and speak English to you just because you're white, it's both incredibly necessary and incredibly hard to leave your comfort zone.
