Technê
As we plan to gather in Milwaukee, home of the first commercially successful typewriter patented by Sholes and Glidden and marketed as the Remington No. 1 in 1874, we meditate on the connection between our craft and technology.
Technê means not just a craft or art and its products, but an understanding of the craft and its products so deep that a master of the craft can teach it to others, as Aristotle explains in Metaphysics. As Sigma Tau Deltans, we exemplify a striving toward the mastery of our disciplinary arts, which we often refer to as craft, and which the rhetoricians amongst us might even call technê. Technê in our disciplines manifests itself in our critical and aesthetic judgment, our craft as writers across many genres, and our ability to teach our craft to others.
As critics, writers, and teachers, we inevitably employ technology (with technê at its root, but often defined in modern English as the machines, tools, and methods that emerge from the practical application of scientific knowledge): from chisels and chalk to pencils, moveable type, typewriters, ballpoint pens, word processors, and more. But technology does not define our technê, the rules or ways of knowing of our craft.
As writers, we have tended to absorb new technologies because they primarily produce the physical texts we have composed. However, we are now faced with an emerging technology that threatens to upend our craft. Generative artificial intelligence, trained on millennia of human writing, purports to compose writing absent of any human agency and, possibly, even to teach it by giving feedback. The concept of technê gives us a framework for evaluating new technologies, whether they aid or undermine our craft and deep knowledge of it. How can we make use of machines, and when should we?
However you might answer those questions, we look forward to the joys of Convention as we gather to celebrate our craft as readers, writers, critics, and teachers—and our ability to contemplate how we will meet the challenges of our evolving craft.
"How can we make use of machines, and when should we?"
Where the theme leads us
Submissions are accepted in a wide range of categories, but those wishing to engage directly with the convention theme might consider these threads.
Craft & Mastery
How does deep craft knowledge survive the move from artisan to algorithm? What does mastery look like when tools change?
Machines & Mind
The relationship between human authorship and machine generation. Authenticity, attribution, voice, and intent in the AI era.
Apprenticeship
Pedagogy and practice. How we teach craft. What we lose when the apprentice never struggles, and what we gain when tools accelerate.
Tools & Technique
From the printing press to the prompt. How tools shape what gets made and what we recognize as literature.