Computers, Writing, Rhetoric and Literature
End Notes
[1] See Faigley's Fragments of Rationality (Ch. 2, "The Changing Political Landscape of
Composition Studies" 48-79) and Lanham's The Electronic Word (Ch. 4, "The Extraordinary
Convergence: Democracy, Technology, Theory, and the University Curriculum," 98-119) for two of the
most current treatments of democracy, capitalism, and technology as they relate to our field.
[2] See Carol A. Stabile's 1994 book, Feminism and the Technological Fix, for a socialist
feminist critique of both feminist technophobia and technomania. Troubled by a technophobic "anti-
modern" attitude (4) and a technomania in which feminists embrace postmodern spaces too quickly
(especially Haraway), Stabile proposes that feminists adopt what Pierre Bourdieu calls a "reasoned
utopianism" in which feminist socialist analyses form the foundation for reshaping reality (156).
[3] I should note that the title of Gayatri Spivak's 1993 collection of essays, Outside in the
Teaching Machine, deconstructs this dichotomy (i.e. outside in). Her title also influenced the
genesis of the title of this essay.
[4] During my research for this essay, I happened upon this story, and it became one of the factors
in my decision to pursue virtual systems research. At a 1991 hearing of the subcommittee on science,
technology, and space (of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation), Al Gore
questions Thomas Furness III, Director of Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of
Washington in Seattle about flight simulation and its relation to virtual technology. (Furness spent
twenty-three years at the Department of Defense and was a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force until 1966.)
Furness explains that in 1981 he and the lab built a helmet for fighter pilots to simulate battle, terrain,
and so forth. The test pilots loved it, he explained, and they learned quickly. But, he says:
[Introduction]
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Copyright (c) 1996