How to Liberate Your Laptop!

The best way to liberate your laptop is to stop thinking of it as a "laptop" (on top of your lap? come on!) and start using it as a portable learning and production studio.

But first, why does your laptop need liberating?

Answer: Because it's being held prisoner by a "business machine" aesthetic that centers on the preeminence of the "office" as the end-all of human life and activity. We don't have much choice, we users of these laptops (and you know who you are), when it comes to this dominant aesthetic, but we can stretch that aesthetic and turn/twist it a bit to better suit our purposes as writers, readers, and researchers.

Design as Resistance Production

Among the MS Office "programs" that you can access by clicking on your "Start" button, three are worth looking at more closely as you assemble your work in this class and start to think about textual production as key to your "presentation" as a writer. Those three are: Word, Publisher, and PowerPoint.

Personally I'm not a big fan of any of these, but they all, each in their own way, offer up a suite of design functions that we can apply variously to the work we do in Composition. I'm assuming that just about everyone reading this has used MS Word to compose papers for high school or college assignments. Many of you have also, no doubt, used PowerPoint to build a slideshow for use in some professional, personal, or academic project. Some may be familiar with MS Publisher, as well, though my experience has been that Publisher is often overlooked because it is either unavailable or unnecessary to most academic work.

Perhaps Publisher is overlooked in traditional academic settings because students are not often asked to produce or "publish" their class work in any formal/official way. Double-spaced essays or research papers printed out on 8.5x11 paper continue to be the norm. If you've worked on a school newspaper, however, or ever produced a big project for a history, literature, or science class, then maybe you've spent some time with this or a similar desktop publishing program.

In any event, let's liberate our laptops, first, by freeing up these programs -- Word and Publisher, especially -- and making use of the more advanced functions that, even in Word, are often neglected. When you get to the point where it's time to finalize your reports and/or documents for this class, explore the design templates in each of these programs and talk with me about how best to package and present your writing. Applying formal design styles does not necessarily improve your writing, but you may find that in trying to make your documents look good you'll be more attentive to making them sound/read well too, and vice versa.

Presentation is key, as I've said often and will say again, and when it comes to writing for professional or academic audiences, design is key to presentation.

Of Blogging and Writer's Blocks

You can also liberate your laptop by using it more regularly as both a storage space and a creative writing space. Take it with you wherever you suspect you'll find a wireless connection. Click it on and pull up your blog. Then see what happens. Even in the absence of free wireless, open up Word or Notepad (in Accessories) and start typing.

If nothing happens, no worries. Sometimes the empty "compose" window -- a virtual blank page -- calls out for text and writing and you'll answer this call by filling it up. At other times, possibly, the blog will stare back at you blankly and you'll want to snap your lap just to avoid the cold, hard glare of what some people call "writer's block."

If this ever happens, do yourself a favor and give up the idea that writing is always -- and only -- about coming up with new, fresh, brilliant ideas out of thin air and on the spur of the moment. I have no problem with fresh, brilliant ideas, but there's much to be learned as well by snatching up bits and pieces of other people's writings (not to mention scraps of anonymous stuff or overheard conversations or whatever) and collecting all of that raw data on your blog as a kind of scrapbook of found material.

As you probably know by now, your "Commonplace Book" label will serve well to mark all these gatherings (clippings) for use elsewhere.

And who knows... Maybe in those moments of "block" you may spot something to include in your Commonplace Book and that "bit" may free up your block. In this way you can use your Commonplace Book entries as *prompts* for future writing, as ways to generate brilliant, fresh writing.

These, then, are two related ways to liberate your laptop. Can you think of any others?

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Footnote: One way to liberate your laptop, maybe, is to leave it at home. As I suggested in class, you can use your spiral notebook and plastic folder to write and gather as well (these are the real-world equivalents of your virtual journal and commonplace book). Some of you may prefer to use these older but equally adaptable writing and research technologies.

Technology Awareness

The words "technique" and "technology" come from the word "techne" and refer basically to the tools we use and how we use them. Writing is a technique, and it's also a technology. The technology is the written or printed word; the technique is how we use words, or think through words, as a means of communication, expression, investigation, etc.

Learning how to write, practicing the technique/s of writing, means finding a place for "writing" in our lives as one communication zone among others.

I like this quote, from novelist Toni Morrison: "If writing is thinking and discovery and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic." [Note to self: should transfer that quote to Commonplace Book later.] I like the way Morrison (in one sentence!) manages to balance to aspects of writing that are crucial to this course: (1) writing as "thinking" and (2) writing as "magic" or, as I see it, using writing to notice things and think through what we see/hear as a process of trans-formation.

So, "technology awareness" week is all about becoming aware of how the technologies we use shape our lives, actions, and learning. The problems we had in class the other day are just as valid (necessary?) as the overall success most people had working with their laptops. To be aware means recognzing when it works and when it doesn't -- and this goes for our developing writing "techniques" as well. Sometimes, that writing work will not work, will break down, won't play right...

Meanwhile, let's also stress the point that these laptops are little writing tools or engines, not to mention production studios and design platforms.

My next "lecture" -- How to Liberate Your Laptop! -- will develop this idea.