In English classes, we have traditionally (for 100 years at least) invested our attention overwhelmingly on THE TEXT, meaning special kinds of writing that are deemed especially beautiful/innovative/profound/relevant/resistant. What is changing, both in the discipline and the technological ecology in which we practice it, to refocus our attention? Who or what are we supposed to be paying attention to, if not (say) Bartleby, the Scrivener? What are some ways that this course itself moves in the direction Liu alludes to?

With the introduction of technology the value of the text has changed. No longer will we be focusing on how beautiful/innovative/profound/relevant/resistant a text my be. Technology has made it so that everyone may become an author and everyone may be involved in the creation of THE TEXT. The modern use of technology i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Vine, etc. thrives on the voice of the people. Its success comes from everyone being able to comment and give an opinion about issues and hot topics. Our focus then changes from the quality of the text and instead just focuses on the bases of the texts. As Alan Liu mentioned in his article, technology is moving a direction where the lines between author and reader are non existent. We are evolving so that a text becomes more of a dialogue or communication between groups rather than a simple text with an author and reader.