Abstract

This chapter focuses on a slice of social ecologies, to digital writing practices and processes. It explores the complexities of the techno-optimistic view of "quantified writer" in an era mediated by digital, networked capacities and computer-mediated instruction and assessment. The chapter borrows its name from the techno-optimistic "quantified self" discourse that proliferates media. This discourse, argue Ruckenstein and Pantzar, rests on underlying beliefs that through the feedback of quantified information about the self, "reality" is made transparent and can be optimized. The digital writer treads across an impressionable landscape. Structured and unstructured, quantified traces of composing actions and interactions are collected, tagged, fed back, and stored. Questions about the mechanisms for gathering the data, for who and what purposes, for how long, and how much are critical to consider, particularly in an era mediated by digital, networked capacities, and computer-mediated instruction and assessment.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationHandbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures
EditorsKathy A. Mills, Amy Stornaiuolo, Anna Smith, Jessica Zacher Pandya
PublisherRoutledge
Pages235-247
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9781315465258
ISBN (Print)9781138206304, 9781138206335
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 22 2017

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Arts and Humanities
  • General Social Sciences

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