4/13/12
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Speaker At SLU To Address Social Impact Of Technology, Part Of Symposium On Hand-Written Documents
CANTON - "Hand to Mouse: How the Way We Write is Changing Who We Are" is the title of a talk by Christine Rosen, senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society, on Tuesday, April 24, at 7:30 p.m. in the Common Room of Sykes Residence Hall at St. Lawrence University. The event, part of a symposium on hand-written documents, is open to the public, free of charge.
A recent study of handwriting in preschool children divided the children into two groups, with one viewing images of letters and the other practicing writing letters for one month. Neuroimaging scans later revealed brain-activation patterns similar to adults in the children who had written the letters,
as well as improved letter-recognition compared to the group who saw but did not write the letters. Rosen's talk examines the impact of the shift away from writing by hand, such as asking what might be the long-term cultural effects of a world where hands-on physical engagement has become the exception and mediated screen time the norm? As we move from learning by hand to learning by mouse or touch-screen, how does this change our experience of the world?
Rosen writes about the social impact of technology, bioethics and the history of genetics. She has also been an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
Her talk is part of a symposium on hand-written documents that includes an exhibition, "stress-busting" workshops with hand-writing, a discussion with local poets and a book-making exercise.
