Collaborative Writing Futures

In the Writing Futures framework, we emphasize the need to embrace writing as the dialogic, socio-technological construction of knowledge as one works with human and nonhuman agents. In this chapter, we provide an overview of scholarship on collaboration and then expand these notions to include writing alongside nonhuman agents. We guide readers in examining the effect of writing collaboratively with nonhuman agents on the traditional rhetor–audience relationship, with emphasis on technological embodiment and the continued emergence of collaborative workspaces. We note the importance of expanding understanding of digital literacy as a means to understand technological embodiment and view human–machine collaboration as dialogic conversation and integrated relationship development. Such work provides readiness to focus on civic challenges that demand collaborative, constructive social action through and with nonhuman agents.