The Word Processor :: Technology Writing Essays

The Word Processor The purpose of this assignment is to explore the many ways in which â€Å"cyberculture† has changed the way we think of writing and writers. It stems from a unit that is focused on the many ways that writing technology as well as reading technology has been altered with the addition of cyberculture to our previously basic ways of life concerning reading and composition. Using readings from Tribble and Trubek’s Writing Material, several articles were used to investigate this topic. Another issue of importance before I begin is the term â€Å"cyberculture† itself. For issues concerning this assignment, I refer to cyberculture as being things such as internet phenomenon’s such as the World Wide Web, Blogs, newsgroups, e-mail, chat rooms, and instant messaging. Cyberculture is indeed changing the way we think of writers, the act of writing and the act of reading. This change is easily apparent when considering the adjustments made in our habits of reading and writing. Along with these adjustments come the benefits that result. The reader should also keep in mind that while these new habits are growing and expanding, some old habits are still present and hard to replace. When describing the many adjustments made in our habits of reading and writing, the example of the word processor helps bring this point to a clearer understanding. Reading online texts found in the form of word processors is one of the most popular habits that we gain from cyberculture. The differences between reading text found onscreen compared to reading a physical text from paper gives many examples of some of the adjustments we currently make in our habits of reading. The fact that this form of reading is becoming more popular is mentioned by James Sosnoski in his essay Hyper-Readers and Their Reading Engines. â€Å"Reading electronic texts on screens is likely to be the predominant mode of reading in the very near future† (Sosnoski 400). He also adds that this habit will eventually â€Å"dominate our practices† (Sosnoski 400). With the word processor, people everywhere are able to make formal documents, letters, tables, etc. quickly and easily. In most cases, it is true that the speed of typing could also be faster than the speed of writing by hand which saves time for those who want to produce material in a shorter amount of time than writing by hand.