Mobile Composition: An Increasing Trend

Technology is advancing at a remarkable rate especially in the area of mobile computers and devices.  We are able to carry these devices on us throughout our daily activities creating an unfathomable amount of opportunities. In addition to being able to access an almost unlimited amount of information, these devices also allow for people to document their experiences in real time. Instead of having to remember these details and reflect on the memories in order to write about a certain situation, people are now able to immediately publish their thoughts on site.

An artistic recreation of future smartphones

In Olin Bjork and John Schwartz’s publication, Writing in the Wild-A Paradigm for Mobile Composition, they discuss the idea of mobile composition and how it can relate to students and their work. They reflect on this saying, “we argue that students can better perceive -and learn to challenge-their social, cultural, and historical locations when they research, write, and even publish on location” (225). They continue to talk about breaking the “traditional classroom-homework dichotomy” in order for students to be able to better relate their thoughts on a certain topic while actually being present at the location they are talking about. The advances in mobile technology have facilitated this idea and will only continue to create an easier and effective way of writing on the go as time moves on. Bjork and Schwartz inform us more on this idea saying, “such assignments reposition writers in the wild, where they must confront material conditions and respond the rhetorical opportunities no often encountered through traditional assignments” (234). I agree with the idea that having students write in different scenarios and locations gives them the ability to think about what they are writing about through a new lens. Continuing to write in the same location may create a pattern that lacks creativity due to repeating of the same thing over and over again.

Future Compute Technology

While thinking about this idea of mobile composition, I couldn’t help but start thinking about future technologies that not yet exist but will be able to further facilitate this idea. In a blog post about future technology by Gloria St on February 13, 2013 she discusses a future flexilble computer that can fold in half for easy transportation. Concepts like this are being thought up every day at tech companies around the word. It is only a matter of time until our grasp of technology is so vast and so complicated, that mobile composition will seem like an ancient idea.