These are all valid criticisms, and the importance and complexity of these questions and concerns is evidenced by how often they are asked and comprehensively addressed, in various forms, again and again in composition research (Krause; Takayoshi and Selfe; Wysocki et. al.; Anderson; Sheppard; Day; Rice; Ball; Yancey; Faigley; Hawisher and Selfe; Harrington et.al.; DeVoss et.al; Gerben; and Reid, to name but a few,). Some of the broader concerns regarding power and hegemony, in fact, provide the strongest rationales for why we should be teaching awareness of digital rhetoric through both critical consumption and production of digital texts.

Nevertheless, I believe that we continue to frame our resistance through repeated doubts and concerns because the answers to our questions about why and how we should embrace digital technologies presented so far do not quite address the underlying pathetic force of our reluctance to change: the pervasive fears and anxieties written into the rhetoric about digital media.

Many of the concerns articulated about introducing digital and multimodal composing focus on problems with access to technological tools and institutional support. This is a serious and legitimate issue, but access and infrastructure (DeVoss et. al.) cannot, or will not, be addressed until there is a significant push towards and understanding of the importance of digital technologies to all composition programs and classes. To get there, the underlying anxieties about failure (I can’t, I don’t have these skills, I’m not techy,) and about loss of professional identity (I teach writing, students need to know how to write, this is not my job, who will prepare students if I don’t, shouldn’t someone else teach this) have to be addressed. Adopting new technologies and new ways of thinking, teaching, and producing scholarship is anxiety producing; it challenges our perceptions of professional identity and success; it is risky.

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