Summary on Selfe's "Lest we think...." be Elizabeth Blake

A) In Cynthia L. Selfe's essay "Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution: Images of Technology and the Nature of Change" Selfe tries to show the American public, and more specifically, students and teachers of English the effects of technology and communication in modern times and how it effects the field of English Studies. Selfe believes that we Americans hope that technology will fix everything, and we aren't entirely wrong: Lowering budgets in schools have been an issue for some time, but thanks to the versatility of technology students are still able to have access to almost all of the tools that would have been in a traditional classroom through the use of computers at a fraction of the cost to school districts. One more thing Selfe finds worth discussion is the impact of images, and the cultural connotations that they carry. Computers are helping to terminate long lived cultural issues like racism and xenophobia through the use of the internet and television programs. Selfe urges us to see the real life benefits of the new technologies, and she's got a damned good point.

B) Selfe points out that xenophobia is being eliminated through the use of "The Electronic Colonial Narrative in programs like Virgin Sound & Record's "One Tribe" which allows western culture to learn about other cultures from the safety of their own living rooms. Selfe's definition of The Electric Colonial narrative hits fearfully close to home.
Selfe claims that Americans toady would rather conform to some pre-determined idea of what a man or woman should be than explore new roles for their gender to play. Selfe insists that these ideas are re-enforced repetitively in magazines and advertisements, casting women as home-makers, the beauty, the seductress and men as the bread-winner, the athlete, the nerd, the biker. She supports this with advertisements that are cohesive to her claim.