ABSTRACT
Behind every writing occasion is a technological vehicle; behind every word committed to paper or an electronic chip, the innovations and limitations of medium have their say. Students usually do not recognize the full impact of this truth. No doubt, they think: “What does technology have to do with me?” Beyond writing a paper with the assistance of a computer, most students think very little about the impact technology has on the process of composition. The trick is to get students to see the truth, to practice a wider vision of composition, a vision that no longer regards the technology of writing as transparent, but instead regards the process of writing as an ideographic art. In my advanced composition course, I take Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1704, 1970) as the exemplar text and his vision of words serves as our model for the power of technical writing in the modern age.
