Forgetting Something?

Within the book, Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century, Cynthia Selfe devotes chapter two over explaining the different views of technology. On the literacy boom side, Selfe states that "according to this representation, American technological know-how, fostered within our system of education, has helped us develop the knowledge of skills needed to create a national information infrastructure that will link people around the country in productive ways." On the literacy bane side, Selfe explains that the opinion is "an opposing pessimistic narrative about technology, especially in its relation to literacy. It gains its potency, in part, from the fears and uncertainties that Americans continue to have about the implications of technology and its use." 

The polemic ("an aggressive attack on or refutation of the opinions or principles of another" according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary) according to Selfe is that basically the intense argument on which opinion is right has led both arguers astray from the importance of technological literacy. As Selfe states, "they end up contributing to a common and undesirable end: neither group pays productive attention to technology issues or to the complicated relationships between technology and literacy." 

In the end, there are almost always people with differing viewpoints, but to focus on your own particular viewpoint too thoroughly can sometimes lead to not seeing the big picture anymore. If two people argue over who was the best actor of a particular movie, they could get so into the argument that they forget how much they liked that movie as a whole, and why. That is the problem with polemic.