In her germinal text, Technology and Literacy in the Twenty- First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, Cynthia Selfe argues that educators need to not only understand the complexities of technological literacy, but also to help others develop a critical and reflective stance toward technology (24). Other scholars have noted that this stance should include the interrogation of potential hegemony of “Politics of the Interface” (Selfe and Selfe) and the perceived “ease” of using software and other equipment (Dilger, Faigley). Dilger notes, “ease is never free: its gain is matched by a loss in choice, security, privacy, health, or a combination thereof.” Dilger goes on to remind us that the “myth of transparency” of technology needs to be debunked by actively focusing on the human practices involved in technology and remembering that there is always human agency at play.

The need to constantly question and challenge the mythologies that surface and spread around computer technologies, both utopian and dystopian, is one of the most compelling reasons to teach the rhetorical features of digital, networked, and multimodal communication to our students. We have a responsibility to make students aware of the issues of power and agency inherent in their use of technology and to help them become critical producers as well as critical consumers of digital texts. In his essay “The Administrator as Technorhetorican,” Michael Day argues:

any administrator of a technology-rich program must be aware of, if not deeply understand, the rhetorical features of technological environments, for, as scholars from Nancy Kaplan (1991) to Amy Kimme Hea (2005) remind us, no technology is neutral, and all technological uses have an effect on what and how we learn and communicate. (3)

I would add that this awareness is equally important for all teachers and students, which is why composition programs MUST become technologically rich.