Actually a single name for two species of fish—the alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and the blueback (Alosa aestevalis)—the “river herring” is an anadromous fish: an animal that possesses the stunning capacity to transform its own physiology to thrive in freshwater ponds and rivers, as well as in the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean. For seven years, I have lived an ethnography of migration with these fish, a work held tenuously together by a rhythmic flow, gathering energy from the millions of river herring who, each spring, return from their three-to five-year walkabout in the open ocean to their natal rivers to spawn.

Make no mistake about it, for as long as people have been writing on computers, others have been whining about how computers negatively affect writing. Digital technology amplifies how blithely we make mistakes about “its”and “it’s” and other linguistic lapses, or so the trope goes. Case in point, Naomi Baron has suggested that predictive text and autocorrection tools have begun “obviating the need to type carefully, look up words in a dictionary, or simply think” (200).

In October 2011, a high school cheerleader in­­ upstate New York woke up from a nap with a stutter. Before long, Thera Sanchez’s stutter escalated into Tourette-like symptoms; twitches, jerks, and vocal outbursts became so disruptive that Thera stopped going to school. In the following weeks, eleven more girls at Le Roy High School presented similar symptoms, and parents became frantic as the school district rushed to determine the cause of the illness.

One[fn] Forewarning: this essay considers individuals accused of racism and child pornography.[/fn]can scarcely go online without engaging someone else’s credibility[fn]I want to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their feedback. Jason Stuart and Tim Lockridge also provided timely and insightful suggestions. I also want to make a particular note of Laurie Gries, whose incredible editorship has shepherded this essay into its current state.

What happens when everyday writing is discarded, forgotten, lost, or even stolen?[i] Consider the Post-it left in a library book, the grocery list forgotten on a store shelf, the letter dropped among the grass. Let loose into the world, these texts embark on untold, unpredictable journeys. Once rediscovered, they pass through new hands and new contexts, undergoing change and reinvention. Some of these found texts eventually appear on the web.

Editor's note: The contribution from Steph Ceraso, Matthew Pavesich, and Jeremy Boggs is a separate website found at https://designpedagogy.github.io/.