Discourse and Ubiquitous Computing

While reading Bolter and Grusin I found myself most interested at looking at what they called "classroom 2000" and how different technological substrates form our discourse as much as we do. (pg. 217) The ability to take notes and ask questions on a computer while listening to a teacher, then later being able to go and listen to his lecture as well as the key points or anything else he may have written down is not only a great advantage to learning but shows just how immersed we have become in the technological world of computers. Computers are are a substrate for text, different forms of text for sure and yet it ultimately allows us to communicate and for others to communicate to us.

The way in which discourse is formed through this relationship is different from face to face, unless you are face to face in a classroom and are still using computers while asking something else. The sheer amount of information we are able to take in this way makes the computer necessary because there is no way we could possible remember it all at once, we need to go back and look at what we said, what the teacher said, and perhaps if the technology allows it to look at what other classmates said. Thus ubiquitous computing not only helps serve our needs but makes itself necessary, it creates a new discourse as we ourselves use it for that very purpose and then we rely on these different forms of computing to help us follow all the different discourses going on that connect at every corner. A word from your notes could make you recall something from the lecture so you must look that back up, but to clarify you decide to look at the professors notes and then it brings you back to what you said yourself. Essentially, ubiquitous computing not only brings the classroom to wherever we are, but it can bring whatever we want to us in some form.