5-7-10

Sheila McElroy

Reading response #5

Cynthia Selfe’s “Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution”

In this article by Cynthia Selfe, she states, “…an exclusive focus on the positive changes associated with technology often serves to distract educators from recognizing how existing social forces actually work to resist change in connection with technology.” She goes on to say, “…how our culture, and the social formations that make up our culture, react with a certain kind of conservatism to technology, even as we laud the changes it promises to bring.” Selfe is pointing out that even though technology is supposedly connected to positive changes and the good it can do, whether for students, government agencies, businesses or for global intercommunication, it still has a tendency to divert educators from recognizing how our ambiguity to class, color and gender, currently work to resist change in its connection with technology. She looks at how ads for computer technology give the impression that it is available to everyone, the Global Village, the One Tribe, yet they target the American, middle-class, white male. She emphasizes that educators must teach students to be “informed critical technology scholars rather than simply technology users”; that it is the teachers’ responsibility to provide a full curriculum to the classroom, not a narrow limitation of the workings of technology. She ends with a reflection from Paulo Friere, who wrote several books on teaching and instructional methods, “we need to be optimistic enough to believe that in teaching ourselves and others to recognize the inequities that challenge humanity in our world-the ethnocentrism, racism, classism, sexism-we have begun the difficult work of addressing these problems. Selfe’s main thesis is that educators need to show their students how to be critical and analytical about how technology portrays all societies, but I also think that society that needs to be critical and analytical as well.

All three of Selfe’s narratives explore how the ad makers claim they are directing their ads toward the Global society, but actually directing it to a specific status-American, middle-class, white male. Whether it is to show them as discoverers and keepers of the “Global Village” and “Electronic Colony”, or to believe there is a “Land of Equal Opportunity” or an “Un-gendered Utopia”. What they aren’t showing is the diversity that now exists. Although all three narratives are important, I would like to explore Selfe’s narrative #2, “Land of Equal Opportunity” and “Land of Difference”. The popular cultural story that is focused on is for equal opportunity and access to technology for all citizens, no matter your gender, class or color. Selfe uses 3 different poster ads as examples for this narrative. Even though the ads are current, the persona is that of the American white male of the fifties. They depict the American social culture of the 1950’s, when working hard was rewarded by a good salary and comfortable living, the time when technology was beginning to grow and America was full of optimism for the future and the computer was that future. They tell us that we have the power to set information free, but only if traditional American values continue to influence technology, because otherwise, the postmodern world will no longer be the land of opportunity, but the land of difference. That to embrace this new technology is to be an American of the 21^st century. They suggest that you, too, can have the same kind of sanctuary and personal happiness that was enjoyed by the citizens of the fifties and ability to keep up with “the Jones, the Gates and your kids”. Selfe states, “If technology is to improve the lives of all Americans regardless of race and class and other differences, our collective ability to envision such a world is not evident in these images.”

I am noticing that advertising companies are starting to incorporate other cultures in their ads. There are ads that picture interracial families for the backdrop to their products and technology. I believe this is the land of opportunity for all races, colors, creeds, and classes. I believe that with such diversity come new concepts and technological advances. I agree with Cynthia Selfe’s statement about believing in the power of the computer to benefit our lives and society, but still distrusting how and if it will do that. There are many articles that also support her writings about the two sides of technology. I find the ads that Selfe writes about to be very discriminatory, one sided and short sighted. Especially since many of the great minds do not belong to just Americans. I understand why the ads were done the way they were, to depict that time when America was believed to be the greatest country, but I don’t understand them either. I grew up in south-east Minnesota in the fifties and the sixties, but where I lived, social and racial differences were not important. All through my school years we had African Americans students, we were not as diverse as schools are these days, but no one I knew seemed to know the difference. Parents taught by example that we are all equal. We didn’t have the technology ads then like there is now, but we did have the Mayo Clinic and its medical research center. The technology there has always been in the forefront of medicine. I would think they looked for and recruited the brightest doctors and researchers no matter their social standing or race. By not placing those “social” limits, they have attracted some the best medical minds. Institutions, whether medical research centers, universities or technology innovators, all have something in common, they are made up of people from the Global village. And advertisers need to do the same.