English 249W-01
Advanced Expository Writing
Spring 1998
Mr. David A. Salomon
Essay #2

Choose one of the following questions, and write a complete essay of approximately 5 to 7 pages.
You are encouraged to use secondary sources for this essay; be sure to cite them using proper
bibliographic form (including Internet citations). 

Your essay should be thoughtful and considered. The issues relate to technology and modern life;
in other words, the issues of this course. This essay is due on Friday, March 13. Papers must be
handed in on time. Papers handed in late will receive a one grade deducation for each class they
are late. You may revise this paper one time for a revised grade.

Don't forget to make use of the links on the class' homepage as well as material and comments
that might come up on the discussion list.

1) In our lifetimes, we are experiencing (and will continue to experience) a clash between the old
and the new it's inevitable. In the Introduction to The Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts writes,
"What the writer writes, how he writes and gets edited, printed, and sold, and then read all of the
old assumptions are under siege" (5). Given what you know about electronic texts, would you
agree or disagree with Birkerts' assertion? If you agree, what do you see as the future of
"reading"? If you disagree, in what ways do you think the "traditional" book will triumph? You
might consider the reactions (historically) to the invention of the radio, the television, the VCR,
and even the printing press. Refer to both printed books and hypertexts (you can find them on the
Internet from the links page) in your essay.

2) Assume you are the chair of the Department of Humanities in a small, liberal arts college in the
Midwest (don't get too excited you don't make that much money!). You have a limited budget,
but you have been given a small endowment of $75,000 left to the school by one of its first
graduates, a Mrs. Polly W. Cracka (who graduated in 1923 with a B.A. in Music). The
endowment must be used in full for one of two projects: to buy $75,000 worth of books for the
school's library; or to buy $75,000 worth of computers and technology for the college. Which
would you choose, and how would you justify your decision? Remember that the conservatives
on the Board of Trustees have a history of routinely dismissing computers and the Internet as the
just the latest fad; also try to take account of what Mrs. Cracka would have wanted.