Overview

From images carved on cave walls, ancient scriptures on textiles and fabrics, and of course the invention of the pen and pencil, humans have been using methods of recording and preserving ideas in a physical space. Print can be described as delivering impressions to a piece of material to document. In the early stages of our cognitive development, we are trained to practice handwriting and manually print our names on a piece of paper. As we get more comfortable we transition into writing in cursive which creates variety in the way we practice styles of manual print. As there is growth with this manual skill each individual develops their own handwriting print that is unique to them. Just as we keep evolving so does this concept of print. In more recent history, print has expanded from your typical pen and paper to a much more complicated medium. This chapter will dive into this major shift in print evolution, the generational impact it has created, and how we can adapt to these changes to better our skills and understanding of this late age of print.

What Is The “Late Age of Print”?

Writing is a material practice that is a basic and necessary skill set for individuals to develop. It is a matter of which approach to take on the task and how we choose to experiment with that allows it to take different forms. Writing is a tool that allows us to express ourselves with words in different forms. Some may express themselves through poems while others choose to express themselves through narratives or journals. The spaces in which we write also allow us to express ourselves in different ways.

The phrase “late age of print” tends to be confusing at first because many would believe that it refers to print’s past. When really the late age of print is what we are experiencing currently in the history of print. This idea that print is still valuable but primarily exists in a digital form within digital spaces. Platforms like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Pages allow us to digitally process words onto documents that can be saved in a digital space. This makes creating and saving documents in one or multiple places on one device essentially more convenient. In instances where one might have had to take the time to handwrite and mail a letter, email exists to cut down receiving time to just minutes if not seconds. Just the invention of the internet alone has created this vast environment in which we can create, share, and receive pieces of writing both old and new at the will of our own fingertips. Old pieces of print are digitized and made easily accessible. New print pieces are saved and preserved to exist as traditional print fades into a mere memory.

With this transition from traditional to primarily digital works comes some concerns. When uploading works of traditional texts, literature, and journals, there is still a physical copy that is available if the digital one is lost. In this world of strictly digital text forms, there are no physical forms of these new texts that can be looked back to like that of works uploaded from traditional to digital. There is also the idea that the traditional forms of text are perfect as is and there is no need for them to be altered because there is a chance for the loss of significant connections. This argument is valid for individuals who enjoy the connection that a physical piece of work provides in an author and audience relationship. But in this late age of print, this lack of connection is a result of a drastic evolution of print created in this digital sphere. The leeway that the digital environment provides for writers and authors is a dangerous commodity. As mentioned in J.D. Applen’s chapter, Old Media, New Media, and Knowledge, Apple quotes Bolter who states that lack of structure, “threatens the definitions of good writing and careful reading” (Applen pg.13), which we established before the late age of print. This raises the question, is what we gain through this new technology more valuable than the structure we previously established?

Remediation: Valuable or Detrimental?

In order to answer the previous question we have to understand the term remediation. Remediation describes the transition from old technologies to new ones with the implication that the new and improved is the better or more reliable option. This term allows us to understand the difference between the “age of print” and the “late age of print”. The age of print was the advances in print before our current phenomenon of the digital world which allows for constant remediations. For example, the process of printing manually to then inventing a technology like the print and press to vamp up the production of printed texts or books would be considered a remediation in the age of print.

Many of the examples mentioned in the previous section such as the development of email and the digital sphere are remediations of older technologies to new or current technologies. As a concept, J.D. Applen mentions that remediation, “illustrates how all media are based on signs or texts that refer to things that are continually reshuffling and changing their relative values as we move on to newer communication technologies (Bolter and Grusin 19). When one kind of medium remediates another, the kinds of texts it uses are weighted differently and thus convey a different world to us” (Applen, pg.13-14). This realization is important to recognize because, in this late age of print, we are still experiencing remediations through new technologies, but it is a much more discrete development. While advances such as the print and press, email, or even the internet are useful technologies that are remediations of our previous ways of communication, when do remedies become too much? The digital platforms used to create print documents provide you with all the tools you need to create, format, check, edit, and save pieces of writing. From experience, being given the tools or platforms that do the work for you tends to create a sense of laziness. When it comes to writing online there is then an expectation and reliance that the devices will format, check, and save documents through the platforms. In return this not only creates lazy writers but also leads to problems like incorrect grammar or spelling, not properly understanding formatting or using the formatting options in unique productive ways, or even loss of documents due to improper saving techniques. What once was a valuable skill is now being tarnished due to too much flexibility within these digital platforms. The easier writing digitally gets the more people forget about the basic skills of writing.

A current example would be platforms like ChatGPT which uses artificial intelligence to produce articles, research, and text so the user doesn’t have to. There have been companies, universities, and many students who have been caught red-handed using these artificial intelligence platforms to do the work for them. A major issue is that while these platforms can use the internet, teach themselves information, or quote sources, none of the information provided is guaranteed to be reliable. It is clear when people use these platforms unsuccessfully because, in pieces that are meant to portray emotion, there is a huge disconnect since artificial intelligence is incapable (for now at least) of computing emotions. While this is true, many people still continue to be negligent and use ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence platforms for their works without revision and post or deliver these articles, news, documents, and messages to people without any revisions. Now leading to a crisis of deciphering what information is credible or reliable and what information is generated from a computer. While advances in technology from the age of print to the late age of print are considered useful for communication and production of print there are negatives that follow when advances rely too much on the platforms and are not aimed to help improve one’s writing skills.

New “Remedies” for Modern Technology

Writing in this late age of print society has become less aware of their writing habits and has conformed to formats provided by these digital platforms. What once was a valuable life skill and even a hobby for many people now seems like a requirement or chore. As a student, this has been a mindset of mine for many years. Using Google Docs, new document, Times New Roman size 12 font, double spaced, and of course relying on spelling and grammar checks to revise the document. The never-ending remediations of this late age of print have created lazy, unoriginal, and boring writers. Is there a way to reverse what has already been done? Or is this our unfortunate new reality?

In my opinion, there are remedies to reverse this spell that modern technology has laid upon us. As a former elementary school student and a future educator, it is crucial to our future development to strictly enforce more focus on spelling, grammar, and formatting in school at all levels. One year of teaching grammar skills in elementary school just to only reference it vaguely each year going forward is not enough. No wonder students end up relying on spell check because we don’t take the necessary approach to teach it properly. Grammar is another story because some of the concepts are confusing and are expected to be taught in depth once and stick. Nonsense. These are skills that need to be refreshed at the beginning of every school year until college. Although that may seem excessive, once these concepts and understanding are engraved into students’ minds they will be less inclined to rely on grammar and spell check moving forward and it will be used as a reference as it was intended to be.

Another remedy is to adjust the way we approach teaching writing to comply with the new advances in technology. Instead of just using these platforms with little to no instruction on how to use them in more than one standard way. When transitioning from writing with pencil and paper to typing in school there is very little instruction on how to use the platforms to begin with. This is why most get stuck using Times New Roman size twelve font, double-spaced, and using the same methods of headings over and over again. Instead, educators should become proficient in using these platforms in order to create assignments that have students format in different styles and ways to navigate the platforms themselves as well. Using templates can be helpful, but what if students were able to format and create unique documents on their own instead of relying on one platform to generate them for them? These remedies will create a digital writing environment that will teach students to rely less on the platforms and feel more confident in using their abilities to navigate the platforms to their own advantage. With more activity involved in navigating these platforms then using them will be more effective and there will be less reliance on what the tools provided create for them and more on what they can create using the tools. These remedies would help preserve the writing process and help maintain writing skills that are being diminished by remedies of this late age of print.

In Conclusion

As technologies advance and we continue to see changes in how these progressions impact our society it is important to remember what we as humans are capable of. Sure, the advancements in technology which have been developed by humans are in fact extremely impressive. But allowing these remediations to replace our skills and lack of will to progress as writers in a digital sphere is dangerous. With this late age of print needs to be the proper education on how to adapt and use these remediations to our advantage without becoming reliant on them to do things for us or else we as humans will not progress. The late age of print has brought useful advances that have made creating, managing, and sharing print works more convenient. It has also created a digital climate that has allowed us to become lazy when it comes to the way in which we go about using or not using the platforms in the way they are intended. It leaves me with the questions, if we address this disconnect at the lower levels of education will it successfully result in more proficient writers in these digital spaces? How will the production of physical print maintain its existence in the future? And how many advances will print in a digital sphere go through until it will no longer be useful to us as writers in a digital environment?