I agree with Peirce Lewis’ argument that students can be taught to “read” landscapes, developing the “necessary skills and vocabulary” for doing so if they don’t possess them already (86). However, with regard to historical landscapes, I wonder if the direction that public history is taking—particularly the trend towards technology—is making it more difficult rather than more efficient for people to develop the skill of reading landscapes.
Lewis states that students “need to develop and cultivate the habit of using their eyes” and questioning the landscape they are observing (93). Interpretive signs and mobile devices, for example, may serve well to give people the necessary “vocabulary” that Lewis mentions. However, if the landscape they are observing employs an overabundance of signs, or if observers need to focus intently on a mobile device in order to learn facts about the landscape, does all of the reading and technological stimulation hinder them from truly “using their eyes”–i.e. actually observing the landscape itself?
Technological innovations can of course be crucial in conveying information about a particular landscape, but I sometimes wonder if too much technology isn’t more likely to get in the way of students’ “readings” of the physical—as opposed to the digital—landscape. (As helpful as I think it may be to have mobile tours of national parks, for example, the prospect of visitors staring at iPhones while the scenery passes them by worries me.) Although I may be somewhat of a Luddite when it comes to the use of technology in education, I am by no means completely pessimistic about it, and I look forward to seeing what comes of our attempts to impart knowledge of various cultural landscapes through our mobile public history projects this semester.