The author argues for complicating current views of writing technology, specifically views of the relationship between old and new literacy technologies. Using a Vygotskian theory and a grounded theory methodology, the author explores the uses of old and new technologies of three contemporary work sites to ground claims that (a) competing visions of what technology is and what it can do are operative in contemporary workplaces, (b) multiple literacy technologies are copresent in the conduct of work, and (c) more advanced literacy technologies are not necessarily the most powerful within work cultures. The case studies are also interpreted through the lens of Bijker's theory of sociotechnical change. computers and writing literacy technological change Vygotsky workplace literacy writing as activity writing technologies In her 1998 address to the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Cynthia Selfe admonished the field of composition studies to "pay attention to technology" (Selfe , 1999). She claimed that the field's inattention to important questions about literacy technologies may make it an unwitting contributor to a national technological agenda that may reproduce, possibly in even more powerful forms, existing trends that perpetuate inequities in the educational system. This inattention, Selfe suggested, may be partly due to a sometimes uncodified yet powerful bifurcation that exists, within composition, between those who use, study, and/or advocate for technology and those who tend to treat matters of technology with "glazed eyes," if not "complete indifference." This leads, Selfe argued, to the professional isolation of teachers who use and scholars who study technology, an isolation exacerbated by the discipline's "general distrust of the machine and [its] preference for the nontechnological." Selfe's call no doubt struck a chord with teachers and scholars of computer writing who have come to appreciate that technology is not transparent but rather imbued-as are all cultural artifacts-with history and with values.
During the past two decades, the subfield of computers and writing has grown and developed a rich conception of technology through hands-on work with computers in