- Make New Professors, but Keep the Old
In the year since Margaret Miller presented an earlier version of her paper at a conference on undergraduate education, national elections have swept not only a new party into control of Congress but also a new political description of technology into our awareness. Futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler have emerged as gurus for those disciples who herald the dawning of the Third Wave Age of Information. In a recent discussion of the Third Wave world view, Michael Kelly summarizes what many take to be the political significance of technology in the Information Age: “It is axiomatic in the Third Wave world view that, in the Age of Information, information is the currency of power: whereas limiting information solidifies the power of those who control it, expanding information destroys the control.” 1 According to this view, Jefferson’s vision of an informed citizenry appears close to realization, and it is no coincidence that those who soon will be downloading Congressional documents posted on the Internet will be doing so under the aegis of THOMAS.
When I responded to the earlier version of “Technoliteracy and the New Professor” a year ago, I focused primarily on the pedagogical, not the political, or at least not explicitly so. But twelve months later I find it hard to keep this alliterating pair of adjectives apart in my own mind, especially since I carry out my pedagogical duties at the university founded by the same man whose memory Third Wavers invoke in their political scenario of an informed electorate empowered by technology. Nevertheless, in responding to Miller once again, I am going to keep my eye primarily on the pedagogical, not because I believe that it constitutes a realm separate from the political but because, if I have anything to contribute to this discussion, my contribution lies in my ability to be specific about pedagogical praxis. When it comes to political theory and its enviable comprehensiveness, I have to admit that, as A. R. Ammons confesses in “Corsons Inlet,”
but Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting beyond the account. 2
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Meanwhile, those who feel more confident about abstracting from my pedagogical specifics to their own political generalizations may do so with my blessing.
Miller’s argument attracts me in three powerful ways. First, it appeals to me as a citizen of a society that, often paradoxically, claims to value both democracy and capitalism. Whereas Third Wavers promote technology by articulating its political function in a democracy, Miller promotes technology by articulating its economic function in a plutocracy: “The capacity to manipulate that technology may very well be the most important ticket to the middle and professional classes to which higher education has long promised access.” Although I could argue with Thoreauvian conviction that access to the middle and professional classes does not guarantee escape from a life of quiet desperation, the fact remains that I have bills to pay, my children probably will have bills to pay, and higher education will most likely help them meet their obligations as it has helped me meet mine. But as Miller suggests, a large difference between my education and my children’s is that theirs will entail logging many more hours at computer terminals than mine did, since mine entailed logging none at all.
My children lead to the second way Miller’s argument appeals to me: as a parent. Having fathered future members of the classes of 2009 and 2013, when four years at the University of Virginia could cost $84,000 and $114,000 respectively (these figures assume an eight-percent annual rate of inflation), I welcome any vision of higher education that resembles Virginia Woolf’s cheap college. Faced with the daunting prospect of accumulating $200,000 for so-called public education, I would love to believe those who claim that we can contain the costs of a college education, increasing them only with the cost of living, but the recent past shows me otherwise and suggests my hopeful faith would be misplaced. If technoliteracy could ease me out...