Inventing Electracy

KYLE GAREY

Ulmer’s definition of electracy, to me in a nutshell, is the ability to augment orality and literacy with electronic discourse. Of course, nothing is ever in a nutshell, and to really understand the anus of Ulmer’s print and electric based theory is not easy.


The shift from print based to electronic based discourse is something that I can relate to. In fact, I was there when it became a learning tool (at least, I think I was on the front lines of Ulmer’s paradigm shift). In 1st grade there was one computer per classroom at my school in Alaska. Ulmer says “The institutional practices of electracy, so far, have been developed within the institution of Entertainment” (online chapter). Our computer was a state of the art Apple II, if I remember correctly, and aside from gathering dust in the corner of the room, we were allowed 30 minutes a week to play a math game that involved frogs hopping from square to square eating fractions, decimals, etc. So, not only was it educational, but it was also entertaining for kids. This seems like an early, rudimentary introduction to Ulmer’s theory of electracy. We became better mathematicians through electronic discourse and we were using state of the art technology (garbage today) to augment print based discourse. Of course, times have drastically changed, and now I feel like my mom when I first got my Nintendo; I stare dumbly at search engines, trying to will what I need to know to the screen without me messing up my computer.


Ulmer says in his online chapter that “The part of the apparatus most accessible within the arts and letters disciplines is the practices of imaging. Electracy needs to do for digital imaging what literacy did for the written word. The purpose of my pedagogy, then, is to learn to use the figural as a mode of image reason, as a supplement to the existing institutional commitment to argumentation and analysis.” An ambitious plan, and, perfectly natural because, since my first introduction to electronic discourse, having it at my disposal has helped me in my quest for knowledge (or at least, the knowledge I was told to quest for by various institutions). But I also have a hard time thinking that Ulmer’s grand plan of using electracy to “supplement existing institutional commitments of argumentation and analysis” will ever come to full fruition. Anybody with a computer can put information on the interwebs; look at Wikipedia. Anyone (and it seems just about everyone) can edit and write whatever they want. Teachers and professors refuse to accept anything that’s not from an accredited source, and a majority of what we read and see on the interweb is not an accredited source. Ulmer’s theory that electracy being based on entertainment is a fair assumption, but I don’t have faith this can become the groundbreaking study tool he thinks it’ll become. Just look at our print-based literature program-we can’t even decide on what the canon is. If we’re still stuck trying to figure out what to literatize, how can we figure out what to electracize?


I understand that electracy is still in its infancy and it does show great promise to supplement and aid in the advancement of discourse. For instance, spending hours at the library to track down a pertinent scholarly article has been replaced with Ebsco, JSTOR and the like to just a few minutes and clicks to find what a person needs. And the younger generation has grown up in a culture that basically demands it use computers to communicate, problem solve, educate, and research. Being able to harness the internet to support orality and literacy is already taking effect, but who knows how effective it will become.

As I discussed in the questions above, with the internet there’s no individuality anymore. While the collective is gaining knowledge, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to find the source of the knowledge. Individuality is becoming lost. It’s easy to find the creator of a print based work; just look at the name under the title. Now, though, there are hundreds of pages using the same information with no clear path back to the originator. What effect will this have on invention? There’s no doubt that the electronic medium is in full force in the educational institutions around the world, but the oral and literate discourses have such a hold on education that I don’t see how Ulmer’s electracy can really become the next step. If by supplementing these traditions he means condensing sources and research material into a few websites, then yes, I can see it becoming a supplement. But there are too many people with too many agendas and too much free time to ever believe that electracy will become the canon that Ulmer believes it to be.