Selfe/Summary Claim

PART A:
In the text “Lest we think the Revolution is a Revolution” by Cynthia L. Selfe she elaborates on how technology and how it is creating much larger changes in the world that we cannot just see but must think about. She believes that Americans think that computers will bring positive social change and with that make the world a much better place. This claim of hers is supported with a narrative, “the computer network that spans the globe will serve to erase meaningless geopolitical borders, eliminate racial and ethnic differences, re-establish historical familial relationship which binds together the peoples of the world regardless of race, ethnicity, or location” (Selfe 294). Since people cannot easily live in peace among themselves they depend upon computers and technology to build fit for us. The simple things we cannot achieve we look to computers for. It’s much easier being someone you’re not or being something you wouldn’t do in reality online than in real life where there is no one to judge one another. Another main focus of Self’s is how commercials and images in them complicate and distort the real meaning. How we’re using one piece of technology in order to in a way sell another. Some images even show the poverty in place like Africa or Dresden trying to convince us that even technology is even mending their problems. In her second narrative “The Land of Equal Opportunity” she explains how the internet is open to anyone and everyone, regardless of class, color, age and race. It’s completely diverse and welcomes each person’s own individualism. In the third narrative “The Un-gendered Utopia” Selfe tells us a myth that one day we will create a utopia despite gender, even though it seems women use computers less than males. Selfe also mentions Andrea Dworkins who claims we need to analyze images that try to throw out false interpretations of female and male computers. We are still living in the old-gendered stereo types of the past. Even though technology is constantly telling us to change, it is still using the old ways in doing so.

PART B:
A claim I found interesting was when Selfe says “Our work as teachers, the curricula we fashion, the corporate and public environments our students enter as professionals, the schools that make up the educational systems---these social formations are also shaped by the same sets of culturally determined values, the same complexities, the same ambiguities, the same contexts for our imaginations” (Selfe 321). Selfe is saying that if we limit to teaching our students one part of a large picture then there will be no change. It’s like if this teacher is teaching me a certain topic one way I wonder how I would see process it if it were a different teacher. We need to keep our options and minds open. Teach all the way around despite our own opinions. Teachers need to teach every aspect of whatever they are teaching so students can get the full picture.
Another claim that I think is important is “For the world to have a future, we must work together as one tribe.” (P. 295) What Selfe is saying is that the world is a shared place. WE must all work together to be the change we would like to see. But the reality is many would rather not change, they don’t see what’s wrong with how things are going right now. I can’t argue with them either because I don’t know how I would even start this change, I’m too accustomed to the now. But in order to see this “change” we must all work together. Even though it’s all about individualism and how every single person holds their own beliefs and opinions, that does not have to change just the way we lay them out should. This is one very large country we call the “United States” something we need to do though is show how “united” we really can be.