The late Douglas Adams wrote, in 1999:

Trying to predict the future is a mug's game. But increasingly it's a game we all have to play because the world is changing so fast and we need to have some sort of idea of what the future's actually going to be like because we are going to have to live there, probably next week.

And Peter Denning and Robert Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) wrote in 1997:

It has been a favorite pastime…to predict the future.  The predictions have been notoriously bad. In 1950, Turing believed that we would have computers that could not be distinguished from humans by their responses to questions….  In 1982, Bill Gates thought that 640K of main memory would suffice for user workspaces in operating systems for many years to come. In 1984, IBM believed that personal computers would not amount to anything…. None of these things happened.  Many of the goals and assumptions embedded in them have been abandoned or remain elusive…. As we stand on the threshold of the next fifty years of computing trying to say something useful about them, we ought to be humbled by our past incapacity to make predictions that were not only believable but actually came true (xiv-xv).

These assertions introduce yet another claim category—one represented by Charles Moran, who, in 1998, uttered the quintessential non-claim—that is, that we don’t know what will happen (203).  This claim is, of course, seductive for a number of reasons—it’s easy to believe, given the complexity, inconsistency, and irregularity of technological inroads into education.  Do we really know anything, we ask?  Perhaps not, despite whatever knowledge or background or intuition that makes us (as these authors) express these claims regarding how the technorhetorical world will, indeed, be (although one might argue that participation in the academic world does not make us expert on other worlds, we believe that, from within our particular focus, academics have the ability to make claims regarding broader predictions and trends).

In other words, it’s still a “mug’s game.” But we still have to try. 

So what do we do to be less of a “mug”--how do we deal with these claims? To be effective, our contemplation to have any utility, we would seem to need to see if they have come true, if their coming true is indeed something that we now think is a good idea; if they haven’t happened and if we think that they are indeed a good idea, we need to suggest how these predictions can be achieved.

But a paradox immediately emerges. For neither we, nor anyone, can accurately predict whether these changes have “come true.” “Truth” (or, perhaps better yet, “arrival”) of these predictions is dependent in every instance upon the experience of the evaluator of prediction truth. For example, while some of these things have come true, and others have not, (at least where we teach), we cannot with honesty interpret what has or has not happened at any other college, university, or school.  (It’s not that we don’t know what may have happened; it’s just that accurate interpretation can come only from one inhabiting the local situation).  Campus cultures, administrative fiats (both toward and away from technologizing), pedagogical initiatives (or the lack thereof), as well as such things as the availability of technology, the school’s technology budget, and even faculty age, attitude, and training, can affect how technological transformation of writing does or does not play out on Campus X.  Simply put, technorhetorical transformation at one school may not--likely will not--be such at another. In addition, the criticality of the last several years of contemporary technorhetoric studies nudges us somewhat away from saying that, universally, “yes, we should all breathlessly wait for these predictions to come true.” We find ourselves in a kind of quandary -- on the one hand, we need some sort of guidance for the future -- both in predicting what will indeed come down the pike, and in deciding whether these things are indeed what we want to happen.  On the other hand, despite the still-strong streak of technological determinism running through these predictions, we find ourselves approaching them with caution.

Thus in the determination of how to treat predictions, and whether and if we wish them to come true, we may wish to heed Charles Moran’s advice and be “more circumspect” about what we wish for  (353)—not necessarily that a prediction may come true and provide us with a horrific quandary, (though we can point to the easily made assumption of some administrators that if a writing class is online, the instructor “doesn’t have that much to do” and therefore can handle 30, 35, or more students in a class) but also that we need, when we predict and plan on the bases of these predictions, to make some careful considerations. 

We must first confess that part of our motivation for examining these claims is born from reading and filing student papers.   As we do so during the first few weeks of the term, before we make explicit the options that are so apparently new to them, we are struck by the fact that few if any of the papers appear any different from a Master’s thesis from the 1950s. And we wonder if, coming out of that decades-old box in the garage and the filing cabinet of 2004, there aren’t some echoes of Wendell Berry’s claim, in “Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer,” that he will only move to the newer technology once it is established that the newer technology does work that is “clearly and demonstrably better than the (technology) it replaces.” To focus a bit more--how many of us receive student compositions that are substantively different than what we received 15 years ago in a way other than other than their medium of conveyance—in other words, are the papers that we receive on the 42X CD the same as the papers we received in 1988, except that they are delivered via CD or e-mail?

If they are, we next consider: is this what we want to happen? Is this what we need to happen?  In all cases, the desired outcomes—the teacher’s institution’s, department’s, or whoever’s—significantly determine the way that technology will be used, and, indeed, the technologies that will be used, in the course. Therefore if we determine as a result of our course planning that we wish students to write, say, comparison/contrast essays with personal examples, then that’s what we will, either consciously or unconsciously—through our explicit or implicit signals—“ask” for from the students. We should, in the end, carefully consider, always with a critical understanding of the mediations available, what we seek from our students as composers. .For example, in a first-year composition course the theme of which makes overt a claim toward an engagement of digitalness, the teacher and students might engage and critique the technology and ask which meanings are best, or necessarily, conveyed through which media.

The three nodes Structure, Media, and Baggage (see also he button bar left, above)  provide three different focuses of consideration within which we might assess claims and contexts, and move forward with reflective, critical optimism:

At any time, use the or the button bar (left) to navigate.