Rhetoric in Digital Environments - Recently Updated Pages

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jhcollier3 — Sun, 25 May 2008 09:03:50 CDT

[Organized by reading or topic; newest links at top]

The Library in the New Age

Robert Darnton
The New York Review of Books
June 12, 2008

"Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?"

Digital Youth Research

" 'Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures' is a three year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the digital youth project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives."

Crossing the (Digital) Line

Julie Frechette"Like most faculty members, when I obtained my teaching position, I was asked to type a few sentences about my scholarly interests for the requisite college Web page. Semester after semester, I promised myself that I would revise my description so that it wasn’t laden with academic prose and one-dimensional representations."

Was Prensky Right?

The REAL brain drain: Modern technology - including violent video games - is changing the way our brains work, says neuroscientist
Susan Greenfield
The Daily Mail, May 9, 2008
"Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, could be facing an unprecedented crisis."

On Academic Blogging

"Blogs and Wikis and 3D, Oh My!"from Inside Higher Education, May 9 2008
"But even if it is unusually well-known, Volokh has the characteristics of most successful academic blogs: Its contributors are scholars and experts in a given field, and they use that expertise to provide on-the-spot analysis and running commentary on issues that matter. They interact with readers who comment on posts and build on (or push against) each other’s insights. Not unlike peer review ... except on a potentially wider scale, and in public."

On Blogging

A simple question from Girish Shambu: Why do you blog?

Taylor on the Clinton Pop Quiz
Pop Quiz: Clinton's Most Blatant Character Assault to Date

Nicholson Baker on Wikipedia (Updated)

"How I fell in love with Wikipedia" -- April 10, 2008. The Guardian, UK.

The Charms of Wikipedia
Nicholson Baker
New York Review of Books, Vol. 55, No. 4, 2008, March 20, 2008
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Human Smoke, Baker's latest non-fiction work about selling WWII as a good war.

Facebook Continues on Its Quest to Take Over the World

"Facebook unveils instant message feature"
Elizabeth Landau
CNN.com, 8 April 2008
"Facebook is a platform that allows people to connect in much deeper and more visceral ways than a standalone IM client ever could. Why just talk to someone when you can experience them? That's what Facebook allows people to do."

Technology and Patriarchy

"Fetal Subtraction: Sex Selection in the United States"
William Saletan
Slate.com, 3 April 2008
"Technology can coax cultures one way or the other by making it easier to do what you want to do, with less difficulty and without other people knowing about it."

My Teaching Avatar is Watching You

"Why Digital Avatars Make the Best Teachers"
Jeremy Bailenson
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4 April 2008
"Virtual technology can guarantee that no child gets left behind."

Listen to Your Avatar

"What Happens in a Virtual World Has a Real-World Impact, a Scholar Finds"
Andrea L. Foster
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4 April 2008
"As the director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Mr. Bailenson has explored ways that online behavior spills over to the real world. People assume that, if anything, online activities emanate from offline lives. But Mr. Bailenson and his colleagues have shown the reverse. Their experiments demonstrate, for instance, that people who watch their avatars— cartoonlike versions of themselves— gain weight from overeating are more likely to adopt a weight-loss plan in real life."

The End of Newpapers?

"Out of Print: The death and life of the American newspaper"
Eric Alterman
31 March 2008

A Take on Digital Political Punidtry

Cruel and Usual Punishment
One man with more courage than brains sacrifices himself on the altar of punditry, and, in so doing, fails to redeem us all
Gene Weingarten
Washington Post
Sunday, March 23, 2008

Brand's "Spacewar"

S P A C E W A R: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums
Stewart Brand
Rolling Stone
7 December 1972

Traveling With the Pranksters

In Mexico, on the Lam With Ken Kesey

Lawrence Downes
New York Times

Rhetoric in Politics

'08 race as rhetoric

Non-Fiction,Scholarship and Being Digital

The New Republic

Cooked Books
Tyler Cowen

"Even if you are a Wikipedia fan who thinks the site is usually accurate, you can't help but feel that there's an implicit marker on all the content: 'Maybe this is correct.' That 'maybe' is what sticks in the craws of so many people. Teachers often insist that their students cannot cite Wikipedia. Journalists and academics are embarrassed to admit they use it, and most would not consider writing for it. But if your goal is to improve human understanding, isn't one of the world's top websites a better outlet than University of Nebraska Press?"

Pedagogy in Digital Environments

Harsh Realities About Virtual Ones
Michael Bugeja
"Rising costs of a college degree at our wireless colleges and universities have resulted in increasing public scrutiny, student debt and budget models based on marketing rather than pedagogical concepts. Academe’s insatiable investment in virtual worlds, social networks and other consumer applications is a benchmark of how far we will go and how much money we will spend in the name of engagement."

Lindsay Waters On Current Academic Writing Practices

A Call for Slow Writing
Lindsay Waters (see also Enemies of Promise)
"There is no good reason why the essay should not replace the book, and a lot of good reasons why it should. I am tempted to say — in order to be maximally provocative — that anyone who publishes a book within six years of earning a Ph.D. should be denied tenure. The chances a person at that stage can have published something worth chopping that many trees down is unlikely. I ask you: How are you preparing for the future that could be yours and mine? We — I mean the world in general — don’t need a lot of bad writing. We need some great writing."

Library Architecture in the Digital Age

Borrowed Time: How do you build a public library in the age of Google?
Witold Rybczynski
A slide-show eassy about the architecture of libraries.

ID Links

On Steve Fuller's Dover Testimony
Fuller's Wikipedia entry
A PDF of his expert report at the Dover trial can be found in the links section.
Fuller in an interesting exchange on Michael Bérubé’s now defunct blog in December 2005. Note the 182 replies.
Also, see the exchange between Fuller and Norman Levitt (of Higher Superstition fame) in Skeptic. First, Levitt's review of Fuller's Science vs. Religion. Second, Fuller's reply. Third, Levitt's last word.
Fuller on the "rhetorical management" of the debate over ID and science education (especially in the UK).

Online reputations and their defenders

Web of Lies
Kevin Sites

"It can take two or 20 minutes to destroy someone on the Web, and it can take hundreds of hours to repair it."

Web Democracy: The Wisdom of the Chaperones: Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy

Chris Wilson
"While Wikipedia does show the creative potential of online communities, it's a mistake to assume the site owes its success to the wisdom of the online crowd."
An important site Chris Wilson leaves out. : reddit

Open Minds, Open Books, Open Source

http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/02/19/opensource
"As card catalogs once gave way to computers, it might be time for another paradigm shift at libraries," the article begins.

Digital Double-Fold?

"An Upstart Web Catalog Challenges an Academic-Library Giant" By Andrea L. Foster
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i24/24a01101.htm
From the issue dated February 22, 2008
"At only 21, Aaron Swartz is attempting to turn the library world upside down. He is taking on the subscription-based WorldCat, the largest bibliographic database on the planet, by building a free online book catalog that anyone can update.

Many academic librarians are wary of Mr. Swartz's project because it will allow nonlibrarians, who may be prone to errors, to catalog books."

Webseries My So-Called Internetlife : How I launched the Web series Quarterlife.

Marshall Herskovitz
An interesting critique of the Internet anchors Herskovitz's approach.

Lawrence Lessig 4 Congress *Update*

"Lessig decides against run for congress at internet speed"
How's this for "Digital Rhetoric"?

What happens when the "rabble" gets involved on the internet?

Juicycampus.com Backlash
Don'tdatehimgirl.com Lawsuit [The source is - gulp - Courttv.com, but it's helpful for an overview of the situation."]

Let's talk about Spacebook

Ned Rossiter

WikiLeaks re-emerges despite injunction

Wikileaks:
"Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis."

Caught in the Web (Lee Siegel)

Lee Siegel on The Daily Show
"A cultural critic -- and former blogger -- looks at the Internet and finds nothing good."
A review of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob.
Another review in the New York Sun.

CharmingBurka

Cell Phone solution to sidestep Laws of the Koran
"The CharmingBurka sends a self-defined picture of the wearing person to every mobile phone next to it. Laws of Koran are not broken." -- The implications for digital rhetoric and digital identity boggle the mind. We should discuss this.

Harvard proposal to publish free on the Web

Article from the NYTimes
I know that Harvard tends to be "overdetermined" in accounts of academic trends (I've argued from the Harvard influence in class) but I find this idea, and its accompanying arguments, fascinating. Lindsay Waters — http://www.hup.harvard.edu/authors/editors/lindsay.html— might be someone interesting to track as this debate unfolds. See: http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/catalog.html#sp04
Follow-up: the program was passed

Previous Course taught by Professor Collier (Fall 2006)

ENGL 5314: On the Nature of Inquiry
An Approach to Inquiry: One Group's Wiki Home
Platonic Objects: a short satire
This is a video project produced by some of the students for their final project.

Re: Big Science! (a parody from TheOnion)

Scientists Ask Congress to Fund $50 Billion Science Thing
"Now, I'm no science major, but if I'm being told by a group of people that the protons, neutrons, and electrons need unifying, then I think we owe it to the American people to go in and unify them," Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) said. "After all, isn't a message of unity what we want to send to our children?"

Zappen, James P. Digital Rhetoric: Toward an Integrated Theory

NASA Goddard's MMO Game
"Suppose, for example, that scientific inqiury were situated within the context of digital spaces with the characteristics and potential outcomes and the strategies of self-expression, participation, and collaboration that we now associate with these spaces. What kind of rhetoric of science would we find within these spaces?" (323-24)

Discussion of a chatroom that only allows unique posts
"Speed encourages an oral and casual style, but it also encourages redundant and repetitive postings." (321)

A Theory of Digital Rhetoric

Megfish — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:38:46 CDT

For best results, make edits with the Firefox browser.

When making changes or additions to the text it would be best to type in the text editor of your choice rather than directly into the Wiki. That way, if there are conflicted changes that are not clearly resolved via the safety measures in place to prevent incompatible edits, then you will be able to maintain your own changes and incorporate them manually. Also, this will help you avoid annoying browser errors.
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A Theory of Rhetoric in Digital Environments or Digital Rhetor(ick)

In this collaborative writing project, we theorize digital rhetoric as a way of being both in and about the digital world.

In characterizing digital rhetoric as distinct, we do not intend a fully incompatible or incommensurable field of effect or inquiry. Instead, this field is composed through largely non-linear, dispersed, and broadly accessible technologies that enable the users to be interactive with the creation of the medium itself. Because of these features of digital space, (interactors) have greater liberty to create and share content while also achieving access to others' contributions that expands exponentially with every submission. Because of this growth, we do not posit or attempt a full account of the field of digital rhetoric, but we do hope to discern its potential applications.

A Possible Difference Between Digital Rhetoric and Rhetoric in Digital Environments

Might rhetoric in digital environments function tropologically? That is, might digital rhetoric constitute what Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee in Ancient Rhetorics describe as “an artful substitution” (438). To explore this question further, we must ask: What is artfully substituted for what?

Let’s explore this question by way of a specific trope—that of the hyperbaton. As Sharon Crowley and Deborah Hawhee note, a linguistic hyperbaton proves “a trope that transposes a term to somewhere other than its usual place” (433). The trope of the hyperbaton seems particularly germane to our current line of inquiry because we are primary concerned with an environment, a digital environment, a place. The hyperbaton clarifies what might be the largest undetected trope that currently circulates in rhetoric studies. Indeed, the hyperbaton highlights the tension between two terms (formerly viewed as interchangeable): (1) rhetoric in digital environments and (2) digital rhetoric. Rhetoric in digital environments clearly situates our object of inquiry (rhetoric) in a particular place (a digital environment). Here, there appears to be no confusion about what we are investigating or where we are investigating it. However, we when consider the term digital rhetoric, we note the presence of a hyperbaton, a transposition. In sum, the object of inquiry has been transposed with the place of inquiry.

This artfully substitution impacts rhetoric in digital environments/digital rhetoric scholarship immensely. In particular, it is our view that a proliferation of shoddy scholarship now exists because of the functioning hyperbaton digital rhetoric. When producing this type of scholarship—what we refer to as Digital Rhetor (Ick!)—scholars sacrifice rigorous research methods and methodologies for a concern with the digital environment. Consequently, a theory of digital rhetoric might be the ultimate Post-Modern move—substituting style for substance.

A Definition of Rhetoric

To begin, we must ask, what is it that we mean by "rhetoric"? What definition of rhetoric do we take for our definition of digital rhetoric. The notion of "persuasive symbolic interaction" seems to connote a Burkean view of rhetoric. In fact, Burke seems to be commonly envoked when looking at rhetoric in digital environments. [Add Warnick's invocation of Burke here]. If we define rhetoric in Burkean terms we go beyond looking at ethos, logos, and pathos. Our very notion of what is persuasive shifts. In the Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke states that “Often we must think of rhetoric not in terms of one particular address, but as a general body of identifications that owe their convincingness much more to trivial repetitions and dull daily reenforcement than to exceptional rhetorical skill.” [add page number] This seems to apply to digital environments in particular as these environments have very much become a matter of "trivial repetition" and "daily reenforcement." So, what is it that keeps us coming back day after day to the same old website? What is it that persuades us to return? Perhaps it is not that we are pursuaded by one outstanding rhetoror, certainly notions of the rhetor as notions of the author, are complicated in digital environments. Instead, following from Burke's definition, the rhetoric of online environments may lie in our identification with a certain online community.

A Definition of Digital Media/ Environments

In order to better understand the work of digital rhetoric, it will be fruitful to further define its site of inquiry: digital media. We are not content in allowing "digital" to be little more than a media delivery method. To be a distinct form of inquiry, the object of digital rhetoric must have a vital, intimate, and atomic existence with(in) digital environments. Also, it is important to remember that the technologies enabling and sustaining these digital environments are not good, not bad, nor are they neutral [citation needed]. As we have seen in Fred Turner's recent chronicle of cyberculture, digital media has more than its fair share of ideological baggage (Counterculture). Any project that situates itself within a digital domain--particularly in the networked, hypertext environment of the internet--would do well to keep Turner's exploration of cyberculture well in mind.

Digital Rhetoric in the Public Sphere

To further this definition of digital rhetoric, we must first look at the concept of the public sphere. How has the public sphere been re-defined in a digital era? Can the Internet be conceived of as a return to the "polis"?

Christian R. Weisser implies that engagement with the public sphere necessitates a point of contact. Whereas Weisser locates this point of contact in the composition classroom, as “something that distinguishes composition from many other academic disciplines,” we locate this point of contact in digital environments (Moving Beyond Academic Discourse 43). Admittedly, these points of contact are not mutually exclusive. In fact, many connections exist between the composition classroom and digital environments. Regardless of where one chooses to locate this point of contact with the public sphere, Weisser asserts that “the various locations of public discourse, though always shifting and transient, nonetheless have their own histories and possibilities” (47). In this essay, we seek to explore the shifting and transient nature of digital environments so as to better conceive of the possibilities for contact with the public sphere through public discourse.

This is not a new project. Susan Wells, Irene Ward, and Christian Weisser are three individuals who have explored the connections between technologies and public discourse. While the questions of inquiry remain the same, the site of inquiry is never stable. Much like the Wiki on which we coauthor this article, digital environments are never stable. Consequently, we must qualify all past work on rhetoric in digital environments as we simultaneously qualify our own work on rhetoric in digital environments. While our inquiry might stop growing, the digital environment will not. Accordingly, when our work is finished, completed, and published, it will have already become outdated, decrepit, and, to some degree, devalued.

Writing in 2002, Weisser draws upon the work of Jurgen Habermas and outlines “three institutional criteria that must be met in the establishment of a public sphere” (50). Weisser describes the public sphere as: (1) A site where “little attention is paid to the status of participants;” (2) A site that debates topics that are of “‘common concern’ to the general public;” and (3) A site that is, “at least in principle, inclusive and open to all participants” (50). Although Weisser applies these criteria to Ward’s notion of a“cyberdemocracy,” we might want to apply these criteria to the various digital media which contribute to digital environments.

Liz Losh designated 2006 “The Year of Digital Rhetoric” due to the no longer ignorable role that digital media plays in world politics. This phenomenon stems from “the availability of digital information through distributed computer networks that impacts American political history”. Information is distributed through purposeful, digital interventions at the hand of concerned, cyber-savvy citizens. Losh posits that digital rhetoric forces accountability: Formerly private political scandals, civic leaders’ mistakes, and military misdemeanors are “leaked” to the public using digital technologies. (Recent examples include inappropriate sexual advances made by members of Congress to minors, politicians’ failures to heed warnings related to Hurricane Katrina, and racially charged comments made by state and national leaders but never intended for the public audience.)

Indeed, the rise of “social media and participatory file sharing culture” has had unmistakable bearing on U.S. politics of late, even shifting party control of the House and Senate during recent election years. This, Losh contends, was due to the strategic release of evidence highlighting politician wrong-doing that resulted in changed voter behavior due to lost voter confidence. Politicians and high-ranking military personnel, too, use digital media in order to advance their own campaigns and agendas, as when U.S. Military personnel tried to change prevailing attitudes towards the Iraq War using Internet based propaganda. (How does this conflict with the idea of a “participatory file sharing culture” in which citizens can be involved? Does this negate the citizen’s role?)

Documents, audio recordings, and videos of such happenings are intentionally leaked by members of the press and members of the alternative media – that is to say, any Web user who posts online. In many instances, the “viral popularity” (says Losh) of video and sound files originally broadcast in traditional media outlets find greater viewership on the World Wide Web. “Thanks to easy digital distribution, [such] video[s] [are] viewed by thousands on YouTube and bec[o]me a national news story for broadcast and print media”. These developments have also ushered in a new form of political sabotage. It’s not just the general public making claims against politicians, but rather political strategists from the alternate camp who distribute information without the other party’s consent.

Virtual Communities

Joseph Harris argues that the word “community” is always seen in a positive light and never in a negative light (qtd. in Blanchard). Hearing the word “community” makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. There is never any critical reflection on the term. Hence what Blanchard describes as “the overuse” of the term “virtual community.” For scholars talking about digital rhetoric, it seems that everybody wants to be optimistic about the potential for digital environments to house new kinds of communities, communities that “replace the relationships lost as people became more isolated from their neighbors” and “[increase] democratic participation and other community activism” (Blanchard). However, Blanchard argues that for digital environments to be classified as virtual communities they must allow for the following: group membership, individual influence, support between members, and shared history between members. In other words, participants in a digital environment must feel that they are an integral part of some group in order for that group to be designated as a virtual community.

While it is easy to imagine communities as collectives of like-minded individuals, but Teresa Harrison notes that most groups regarded as communities are characterized by disagreement over fundamental issues. Underscored in this definition is the idea that what is common to a community is not a physical space or place, but a “symbolic system of shared symbols, constructs, and norms of communication (Harrison). This description of community is similar to Lester Faigley’s notion of a discourse community, where members “know what is worth communicating, how it can be communicated, what other members of the community are likely to know and believe to be true about certain subjects, how other members can be persuaded and so on." In a strong sense, communities are grounded in how they communicate with each other. The idea of a virtual community, then, would be gounded in an understanding of virtual or digital communication.

Examples of Digital Rhetoric

Blogs

One type of digital media that has garnished a great deal of discussion is the weblog (blog). Blogs started in the late 1990s and have gained popularity through websites such as LiveJournal and Blogger. As a genre, blogs are still changing and emerging, but in the "Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture," Gurak et al. provide some useful definitions for what the genre of the blog is at this time. They state, "what characterizes blogs are their form and function: all posts to the blog are time-stamped with the most recent post at the top, creating a reverse chronological structure governed by spontaneity and novelty." Content, however, can vary greatly depending on the blog. So can authorship. As Gurak et. al note, blogs can " combine musings, memories, jokes, reflections on research, photographs, rants, and essays," among other things. Blogs can have one author or multiple authors. In some cases, they are communities in and of themselves, in other cases, they are locked so that only those invited can read them.

Although Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepard attempt to define blogs as a genre, these texts do not all respond to the same rhetorical exigency. This makes them particularly difficult to pin down in terms of digital rhetoric. The relationship between blogs and the public sphere is especially problematic. One thing that blog researchers are not always able to account for is the issue of access with blogs. On LiveJournal, a large number of users have their journals marked "friends only" so that the public at large cannot read their writing, yet even these blogs seem to fit our definition of redefining the public sphere. No longer is Julie writing her deep, dark personal thoughts in a journal with a heart-shaped locket that she hides under her bed - now, she is blogging them. Even if she limits her audience, the chances are high that she still writes journal entries for others to read. The nature of what is personal and what is public is thus reconcieved, even if public access is limited by the author.

Stigma Communication
Rachel Smith describes the process of how stigma communication motivates people to bond in-group members. Here I want to demonstrate how that might work in the context of a digital environment, particularly in the promotional blog for the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Stigma messages as bearing four attributes in providing cues that (1) distinguish people and (2) categorize them as a separate social entity. They also (3) link this group to physical and social peril and (4) imply blame on the part of members of the group for belonging to that group and their linked peril. These cues encourage the activation of stereotypes, induce affective reactions, and the associated action tendencies (Smith 463).

Perhaps the most blatant example of this is in a blog entry dated October 31st, 2007, titled “Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology?” Stein wastes no time in referring to Karl Marx as “evil,” and subsequently compares Darwin to Marx as being the product of the ideologies of his time—which here are portrayed as imperialist. Thus, stigma communication is already established within the first few paragraphs of the entry: “Imperialism had a short but hideous history–of repression and murder,” and:

"Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process."

Ignoring the falsity of these claims for the moment, what we see here is basically an attempt to distinguish a group (Darwinists), to categorize them as a separate entity (as members of an antiquated ideology), and to link them to physical and social peril (imperialism, the Holocaust). Blame has already been established in the preceding entries. An actual discussion of the merits of evolutionary biology is precluded on moral grounds—by dehumanizing an opposing camp, Expelled is rhetorically guarded against counterclaims.

The Rhetoric of Dimissal: How instability works

Barbara Warnick, in her 2007 study Rhetoric Online, states that “critics should not look to the communication platform or its features as per se good or bad when making attributions about how its use affects society. Instead, they should consider how its affordances are shaped and applied by users…” (22). Her definition of “affordances,” however, to me seems to emphasize only what we might regard as positive traits: interactivity, speed, intertextuality, etc. She later lists a number of perceived shortcomings that the Web has as a persuasive medium: its instability, its potential to contribute to the decline of certain forms of literacy, and unequal access (27). It is my contention that these traits can actually be used to rhetorical advantage; by limiting access or silencing opposing viewpoints, these shortcomings can further the promotion of identification that Burke felt was integral to persuasion: “we are clearly in the region of rhetoric when considering the identifications whereby a specialized activity makes one a participant in some social or economic class. ‘Belonging’ in this sense is rhetorical” (A Rhetoric 28). Web authors can foster this identification through any number of the positive and interactive means that Warnick describes, but there are also a number of tactics that utilize the Web’s more unstable features to engage in what I term a rhetoric of dismissal.

How might a digital environment be used to preemptively quell discussion? What strategies may be employed? How does this sort of quelling benefit the author?

Let me suggest that you begin by looking at a specific concept (… or assumption, idea, implication, rhetorical element, word) embedded in this definition and offer an argument as to how it shapes our theory of digital rhetoric.

You are free to revise any and all elements of this text at any time;
this includes outright elimination or quarantining of ailing texts.
Be merciful. But, be just.

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QuoteBank:
[submit quotes below that are likely to warrant inclusion in this essay;
deposit and withdrawal at will.]

"...collaborative constitution is necessarily an uncertain, unpredictable endeavour. It resists easy formulation. Concepts are contextual. Experimentation is key, and experience is crucial. Those who insist on predefined outcomes and lists of deliverables will only be disappointed. But such agents of administrative anxiety are essential for the collaborative constitution of creativity. See these procedural types as conflict generators that wish to police the borders of reason and the act of action. Don’t be concerned about the registration of denial. The negative affect will undoubtedly take hold and propel your investigation in one direction or many."

Rossiter, Ned. "YourSpace is my time..."

http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=260

Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. 149-181.

"A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction" (149).

"By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs" (150).

[note about the Haraway quotes: they're being included because they seem to raise interesting questions about what happens to us when we interact with digital rhetoric.]

"Setting cyberspace aside for a moment, let’s look at virtual reality (VR), which was coined by Jaron Lanier. Whereas the term cyberspace may have had its origins in Gibson’s cyberpunk science fiction, Howard Rheingold and Michael Heim suggest that VR had its origins in science (Vitanza 2)."

"Therefore, when we are in VR, we can experience both cyberspace and virtual reality (Vitanza 3)."

"For many including Plato and even Aristotle, this illusion of being elsewhere is not good. However, many people argue that when we are actually in VR (!) we are not imitating a real action but are in a completely different, if virtual reality (Vitanza 3)."

Working Bibliography:
Burke. A Rhetoric of Motives. [finish citation]

Miller, Carolyn, and Dawn Shepherd. "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog." Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Eds. Laura Gurak, et al. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/

Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. "Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture." Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/

Vitanza, Victor J. CyberReader: Abridged Edition. Boston: Pearson Longman, 2005.

Weisser, Christian R. Moving Beyond Academic Discourse: Composition Studies and Public Sphere. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2002.

Digital Rhetoric and the concept of Progress

If we apply these general reflections [on the need of new methods] to the various sciences, we can find in each of them examples of progressive improvement that will remove any doubts about what we may expect for the future.” Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet, The Progress of the Human Mind, p.186.

More than two centuries have passed since Condorcet, while hiding from the Jacobin’s anger, wrote the Progress of the Human Mind. In the years after his death, the vision of combining scientific enlightenment and social change suggested the dominant progressive doctrine of the West, to be celebrated in the political and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century. Opposition, however, to the esprit philosophique -through the forging of an equally modern world-picture, had begun from the middle of the eighteenth century. Since the beginnings of the end of the Old Regime, concepts of progress and decline have co-existed as part and parcel of the same discourse. Indeed, they have been constantly constructing and reinventing one another.

In our case, there are a couple of points that we might want to look at in terms of correlating the ideal of progress with the historical evolution of a rhetorical theory. First, besides some early "suggestions" of the concept, the ideal of progress in its contemporary guise did not arise until the so-called early modern times. Indeed, the writings of Francis Bacon seem to suggest the locus classicus of the notion's first crystallized manifestation (J.B. Bury, 1924).
Accordingly, our first point would be that the characteristically modern concept of progress was absent from classical antiquity and, thus, from the Aristotelian tradition of rhetoric as we have discussed it in this class.

Our second point would be to look into the conditions that gave rise to the traditional progressivist spirit and to examine how those relate with the development of a rhetorical theory. Among the factors that entailed the structuring of modern conceptions of progress one traces the following: (See also Zilsel 1942, 1945 and Keller, 1950)

1. The gradual attenuation of scriptural authority, as well as of the authority of "great figures of science" i.e. (Aristotle; Galen).

2. The "de-individualization" of science, as it was manifested by the dispersal of Ionian type philosophical schools.

3. The gradual introduction of an ideology of practical use, to say nothing about the spirit of cooperation

It is interesting, therefore, to look into how notions of rhetoric and progress have co-evolved given that rhetoric emanated within a context where "scientific progress" was absent. In addition, one realizes that the former is currently practiced within a matrix that is constituted by elements that gave rise to the latter.

Question Formation and Analysis 10

jhcollier3 — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:08:47 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Question Formation and Analysis 9

jhcollier3 — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:20:18 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Question Formation and Analysis 8

jhcollier3 — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:07:43 CDT

Thank you for your work on the previous Question Formation and Analysis assignments — and the assignments yet to come. 8 belongs to all.

Question Formation and Analysis 7

jhcollier3 — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:04:02 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Question Formation and Analysis 6

jhcollier3 — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 07:58:23 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Question Formation and Analysis 5

taloy — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:05:56 CDT

Reference for Taylor's question on the use of persuasion in manufacturing consent:
from Walter Lippman's Public Opinion (1922). (Chapter 15:4)

"Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise. Under the impact of propaganda, no necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-decption, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach."

Microsoft Silverlight™ and the Library of Congress - Double Fold part deux

Selling out for a mere 3-million
Silverlight: in Microsoft's words

Question Formation and Analysis 1

jhcollier3 — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:32:15 CST

In this forum please post your questions, and your analyses of selected questions, on "The Idea of Rhetoric" (pgs. 25-85; Dilip Gaonkar) in Rhetorical Hermeneutics.For reference, here's the assignment.

Question Formation and Analysis 4

jhcollier3 — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:19:29 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Teams

jhcollier3 — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:38:18 CST

Here's the team line-up:

Team 1
Michael Butera; Jennifer Cover; Megan Fisher; Brian Gogan; Kara Lafleur; Taylor Loy

Team 2
Daniel Lawson; Ashley Patriarca; Amy Reed; Nick Sakellariou; Grete Scott

Please consult the Question Formation and Analysis assignment (http://www.faculty.english.vt.edu/Collier/digrhet/assign/questions.htm) and the class calendar for assignment particulars and due dates. I'll create forums on the wiki during the semester.

Question Formation and Analysis 3

jhcollier3 — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:32:08 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Question Formation and Analysis 2

jhcollier3 — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 11:33:47 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Home

taloy — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:32:10 CST

Welcome to the wiki supporting Rhetoric in Digital Environments for spring 2008.

Check out the Discussion Forum for an extension of classroom discourse.