CPE Rough Draft

Hello All:

My Critical Photo Essay will be entirely video based, in the form of interviews.  Although I am not filming until Thursday (Nov. 18th), I have included my list of questions that I will be asking each interviewee.  My project will explore the perspectives of the older generation (65+) regarding technology, and whether or not it helps our hinders our progress as a society.  So far, I have 5 subjects to interview, but I suspect that I may not use all of the footage I shoot because for a 10 minute video, it only gives each person ~20 seconds to answer per question.  My intention is to interview each person alone, so that 'group think' is less likely to occur.

To My Group Members:
If there are parts of my rough draft that are confusing, or you can think of another question that I should be asking, I'm all ears.

The Individual VS. The Network

I certainly prefer videos to readings for these blogs, which is not at all surprising considering the generation I'm a part of.  Anderson said that in 4 years, more than 90% of the webs data will be video composition, and although my initial reaction was surprise, the more I think about it the more I think that 4 years may be a lengthy estimate.  I already try to avoid texts by looking up videos that sum up the ideas, and if a video isn't available, I go to the next best thing: audio.  There have been quite a few times in college where I knew that I didn't have the time to read any texts at all, so I buy audiobooks instead so that I can listen while I'm at work, or cleaning the house, etc.  This is an aspect of my life that I'm kind of quiet about, because as a writer it's blasphemy to be open about NOT reading.  The truth is, from what I can remember about reading, I loved it.  It's easy to get lost in a book (especially fiction), and leave the real world behind.  The only problem is that the real world currently doesn't cater to the proper amount of time it takes a person to sit down with a book.  We're too busy responding to texts/emails/voicemails/social networks to really set aside the time to get lost in literature.  All this networking is valuable though, because the more people that are on board a particular train of thought, the faster that train rides into something revolutionary.

But what about our daydreams?  What about our introspective moments that allow us so sort through the sub-par ideas, and reach the really good ones?  When we are in constant 'network' mode, we have the ability to bounce ideas off of each other and make joint decisions about what's worth developing and what isn't, but something about this approach takes away the magic, or "epic win" feeling of hatching an idea.  When you take away the magic, you diminish the desire that Chris Anderson was talking about...at least in my experience.  Anderson also focuses on the positive effects of global recognition that ultimately lead to a spike in passion and desire among the public who generate this recognition, which causes me to think of the different implications this has on an individual vs. a group effort.  Jesus what a boring sentence, I would have stopped reading at 'ultimately' if I were you.  Anyways, when I see a video of a single person being awesome at something, I look at them almost like a mystical creature; someone who does something so incredible that it pushes the boundaries of what I thought our redundant piles of protoplasm were capable of.  In that moment, I want to become a mystical creature too, and believe that I can do it.  On the other hand, when I see a group of people do something amazing, I'm almost completely unmoved.  Something about the collaboration of people to complete a task is common and taken for granted, and I find myself thinking, "Of course you can do this one thing when you string 50 brains together to do it.  Big deal." The fact is, it IS a big deal, but there is something far more appealing and inspiring about an individual instead of a group.

Why the hell is this? Do any of you feel this way?  Shouldn't 10x the amount of 'mystical creatures' result in something truly incredible?
Even the first video we watched in class of thousands of voices recorded via webcam was easy to look past.  Perhaps it's a personal problem, or a case of me projecting, but I find myself rooting for the individual, and hoping that the group effort fails just so it highlights how awesome the individual is.

Despite my bitterness toward social networking and group efforts, I completely agree with Anil Dash's concept that creating as an island will only get you so far, because networking will always get the ball rolling faster.  This notion feeds into my CPE in an interesting way, because as I start to come up with questions for the elderly about technology, I realize that the older generation has a common belief that each person takes care of themselves, and earns their rewards without help from others.  I was raised this way too--if you need help, help yourself so that you don't owe anyone anything.  Can't make rent?  Don't you dare ask your family for help, go out and get another job...two jobs if that's what it takes.  Similarly, if you have a radical idea that could improve the lives of billions, climb that mountain alone so no one can taint your vision.  Of course, doing anything alone takes at least twice as long as it would with help, (not trolling, but...) what's the rush?  It always feels like we are racing toward some final achievement, but none of us know what it is.  As Seth Priebatsch suggests, maybe this race has become a game for all of us, one that we don't know how to stop playing.  We keep trying to level up, but the ground we stand on raises along with us, so it never really feels like we get anywhere.  So we try harder, invent faster, socialize more, as if the final achievement is one complete unified consciousness; we catch glimpses of it and think that's it! that's the ticket! Then we go to class and we all talk about concepts that already came out of someone else's mouth in order to try and come up with a better concept that will be the future conversational fuel for classes to come.  We all try to laugh at the same memes and videos, join the same online games so we can curse similarly, mimic sarcastic vocal inflections so we sound cool, and say things like "obvi" instead of obviously to identify where we stand linguistically in our generation.  Some days I look at all this and think, "Wow, we really do all cultivate each other!" and other days I think, "Have we forgotten how to cultivate ourselves?"

Woah, Thompson.

Thompson's book is pretty much composing my questions for me for the Critical Photo Essay.  Since my focus has shifted to elderly perspectives on technology, and whether or not this technology is beneficial or detrimental to our progress as a society, I've become interested in the question of are we getting dumber?  This question evokes another area of inquiry, which is do we value memory in an age where it isn't a necessity?  Thompson has some quotes that pertain to these question pretty well.
(Also, apologies for not having page numbers, my kindle version only has locations)




"If we remembered every single detail of everything, we wouldn't be able to make sense of anything." (Thompson)

How can this be? I'm reading this as "if we have all the information possible, we wouldn't know how to use it."  This seems absurd, because I think that with more information, the more sense you can make.  Perhaps this quote is assuming that you have a normal brain until you're 25, and one morning you wake up with every memory from the womb to the present moment.  Sure, that would be pretty overwhelming.  But if our brains functioned like machines from the very beginning, never forgetting a single piece of data, I think we could make sense of everything.  So...I don't buy this.

"The real power of digital memories will be to trigger our human ones." (Thompson)

This is a pretty important statement, mostly because this is already in effect.  Using machines as triggers instead of 'actors' for lack of a better term seems like a possible way to maintain a balance between machines NOT taking over, and humans remaining in control.  I realize this comes off as a little paranoid, because I don't have a lot of trust in technology, or privacy, so in an effort to combat this fear I've tried to see the collective consciousness system (the internet) as a harmonious balance between humans, instead of man vs. machine.  For example, the biggest fear in using machines as memory triggers is that it might not be the machine at all, but some government agency using the machine as a catalyst for some form of mind control.  Holy shit I can't believe I typed such a batshit crazy sentence.  Anyways, the important thing to remember with this specific kind of paranoia is that most networks tend to correct these types of discrepancies.  For each Big Brother-ish nefarious government movement, there is an equal and opposite reaction where the hackers/geo loggers/bloggers/twits derail the government plan.  So, it's a cool thing to have internet vigilantes.

Lastly, I'd like to touch on the concept of ambient awareness.  This was really cool to see fleshed out, because it's a phenomenon that we all experience.  It made me realize that I am less ambiently aware than all of my classmates, because I don't social network.  However, I still experience some amount of this awareness through things like email and texting (sorry Alex, gotta use you as an example).  For the first month of the semester, Alex was a static character in my classroom fixture.  We'd discuss readings when prompted by Doug and participate in large group discussions, but once class was over, the character(s) disappear, at least for me.  One day Alex and I decided to exchange numbers, in an effort to kick each other's ass when motivation levels got low and one of us contemplated not going to class.  As soon as she was entered into my phone, she became a fixture in my mind instead of just the classroom.  Each Tuesday and Thursday morning, there's some minor degree of acknowledgement that both Alex and I might be toying with the idea of not coming to class, and this awareness prompts a motivational text message.  Another example is with Ian, who I've known in previous classes, but never interacted with as a human, only as a student (you guys all know they aren't the same thing.  Nobody says shit like "it struck me as particularly interesting that bleh bleh bleh and the implications are fairly extensive in terms of theoretical perspectives" in conversation, and if you do, nobody enjoys talking to you.)  Ian and I exchanged numbers this semester also, and through our occasional texts an image of his life started to emerge for me.  Whether this image is accurate or not is irrelevant, it's the fact that the technological action of inserting a number into a phone suddenly makes a person more tangible.  Personally, I find this equal parts spooky and cool, and I can't help but wonder what other awarenesses I experience.  Overall, Thompson gave me a ton to think about, and helped me start my CPE, so right the fuck on.   

    

Selling Perspectives

As I was reading the Kohl et al article, I realized that I was reading a collaborative essay about collaboration.  I think that this was an appropriate choice on the authors' part, and it caused me to think 'behind the scenes' of this article as I kept reading.  I had to ask myself if my understanding of writing shifted at all with the knowledge that "collaborative processes of writing dissolve the central intention of the author" (174).  In short, my answer is no.  While collaboration can be useful during the 'bouncing ideas around' stage of writing, I think that writing goals are ultimately solitary, and therefore benefit from solitary pursuit.  However, I'm speaking purely about one stage of composition here, which is the actual writing of the draft.  I think collaboration is useful again when it comes to editing so that a more objective perspective is available.  With this in mind, I had to wonder what the writing process looked like for Kohl et al, since there were three authors.  The essay flows surprisingly well, which brings up another quote from page 174: "the authors only work on passages and never on the entire text."  Of course, this quote was in reference to Wikipedia, but I think that it's generally true for writing collaborations.  Obviously we read through our co-authors' sections, but in my experience it's often with far less scrutiny than we would read our own sections with.  Why is this?

 This goes back to my 'writing goals are solitary' statement.  When we complete our area of responsibility, we look at our co-authors' responsibilities as secondary because we already have a sense of accomplishment.  This is a dangerous attitude, because the finished product will have everyone's name attached to it, without indication of who wrote the 'better' sections.  Writing is work, and part of that work is understanding that different writing styles often clash, and knowing how to smooth the transitions between styles.  How does Wikipedia do this?  Well, the wiki pages ridicule each textual input for sources to ensure that all information is accurate and properly cited, but that doesn't smooth stylistic differences.  From what I've seen, 'correct' Wikipedia entries are concise sentences that are only concerned with the facts, and less concerned with cultural perspectives.  So how collaborative is it really, if all textual input is derived from a database of reliable sources instead of opinions?

This leads right into Johnson-Eilola's main question, which is "where does writing come from?"  Although I've stated that writing goals are often solitary, I agree with the point made here that "all texts are interdependent" (200).  Writers are not in isolated bubbles (except the filter bubble), generating completely original ideas out of thin air.  We can only generate content that draws from other sources, which means that solitary writing goals must draw from the societal collaborative experience.  In other words, we need to be aware of outside perspectives in order to form our own inside perspectives.

I'm finishing up this blog in class as we discuss these readings, and I came to an important question.  Doug summarized the concepts by saying that we have reached an age where we no longer build things, we build ideas, and sell them as goods or commodities.  I agree with this, but it begs the question...does this mean we are selling perspectives?

College Stress Infographic

Process Reflection

This infographic was not at all my first idea.  Originally I wanted to display the crazy depths of the ocean by comparing it to common landmarks that we're all familiar with, but after a quick search I found hundreds of those.  My next idea focused on mental health statistics among college students, but that quickly got out of hand and many of the pictures I planned on using were...let's say insensitive.  That failed idea brought me to the stress infographic you see here, which I think most of us can relate to.  These statistics were incredibly easy to pull up, but the time consuming part was finding the right clip art and spacing everything in an aesthetically pleasing way.  I used a template in Piktochart, but ultimately made it my own by adding slides and making it more complex.  All of the available backgrounds were either wood textures or busy patterns, but I discovered that by making wood textures more opaque, it resembled lined paper which gave me the appropriate space to build on.

I felt that it wasn't enough to just display how many students are affected by stress, so I made my infographic somewhat useful by offering suggestions to counteract stress.  I thought it was interesting that my statistics revolve around making excuses, and ultimately buying more time in order to feel more relaxed.  I'm not sure whether or not this points to our generation being lazy, our society making unrealistic demands, or a combination of both, but I don't think this system is working out too well.  This is getting pretty off topic, but I read that Sweden just switched to a 6 hour workday, and productivity shot through the roof.  Perhaps a comparison between Swedish/American workers would make an interesting infographic...Anyways, this project was not difficult, just time consuming.  If I had to do this again, I would spend a little more time finding an engaging topic instead of looking for pictures.  

CPE Proposal: Senioritis

In the interest of many of us in this class, I’ve decided to utilize a common affliction that we’ve all experienced (or are currently experiencing) and understand the cause and effects of ‘senioritis.’  Dwindling motivation is something that I’m plagued by this semester, so instead of letting it get the best of me I thought that it would be productive to analyze why this happens to so many of us, as well as shed some light on possible remedies.  The rhetorical approach I aim to take with this topic concerns the element of persuasion, since persuasion is a necessary counterpart for motivation.  I’d like to analyze the persuasive weight that accompanies both positive and negative reinforcement when it comes to completing a long-term task. 

     I’ve read a fair amount of peer reviewed articles concerning senioritis, all of which have varied opinions about the delineating factors that contribute to a lack of motivation.  What most studies fail to acknowledge is the fact that there are several instances of being a senior throughout life aside from the obvious college/high school titles.  5^th graders are the seniors of middle school, 8^th graders are the seniors of Jr. high school, and 64 year olds are seniors in the sense that they are about to graduate on to retirement.  From personal observation, I’ve noticed that each of these groups experience some form of senioritis.  One theory I have is that there is some decline in motivation once we near the end of a major life task because most of us get a premature sense of accomplishment before the task is actually finished.  Conversely, I think it’s possible that by the time we reach seniority, we have become so comfortable with our surroundings and routines that it seems impossible for our current situation to change whether we are motivated or not.  By this I mean that we take our positions in life/school for granted, and assume that we are fixed into an arbitrary system that will remain unaffected by our actions. 

I’d like this project to take the form of multiple camera interviews, ideally with one person from each section of seniors.  In my head, I imagine my video to be somewhat of a Barbara Walters spoof, so that it isn’t so stiff and dry.  I’ll come up with a specific set of questions for each age group, and try to make connections between them all in order to get the bigger picture into view.  Through conducting this research, I hope to better understand my own rhetorical situation in reference to education, and through this understanding, I hope to be able to condition myself to control my motivation a little better.    

Punctuation is Music

I wish I had read Solomon before conducting my A/V short.  The concepts laid out here are exactly what I knew to be true, but didn’t have the knowledge to articulate.  “Punctuation directs tempo, pitch, volume, and the separation of words” (Solomon, 282).  I think most of us are aware of this fact, however we tend to keep these literary tonalities in our heads, because we are too self-conscious to portray them out loud.  If we had to read the sentence, “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?!” in our heads, most of us would agree that the voice would be some combination of strained/shrill/disbelief, possibly yelling or whispering harshly.  However, if asked to read this aloud in front of the entire class, I bet more than 75% of us would read it fairly monotone, with only a slight vocal inflection at the end to identify it as a question.  If we are to become “Creative Composers” as Bernhardt puts it, shouldn’t we shed our vocal insecurities and embrace the tempo/pitch/volume that the page implies?  My band teacher always used to preach (mostly to the woodwinds, because they are modest folks) to PLAY IT AS IT’S WRITTEN.  You can’t play every note piano just because you’re afraid of honking every note that’s forte.  Similarly, reading blatant punctuation in monotone is…well…monotonous.   It completely bastardizes the composition that the composer intended.  I would even go so far as to say that those who lack the ability to properly vocalize texts shouldn’t be reading aloud at all.  None of us want to listen to “Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…”

I thought it was fascinating—albeit arbitrary—that Solomon designated certain punctuations to Major ? ! [ ], Intermediate : ; “ “ ( ) / and Minor - ‘ *.  I think these distinctions mean different things to each writer/reader, but I like where he’s going with this.  I agree with all the intermediate symbols, because they make you pause and ponder.  Minor and Major are something I struggle with in all areas, because often times (musically speaking) you can slip a Major into a dominantly Minor context, and it feels very much like a Minor.  Similarly, ?! feels abrupt/intrusive, so I can see that as Minor in some cases.  I really like the attempt at categorization though.  Maybe this can inform whatever question I develop for the Critical Photo Essay.

“The truth of actions is reached via the mode of writing, and the truth of how the world looks is reached via the mode of image” (Kress, 48). 

There is something about this quote that I can’t quite pick apart, but I think that it’s important (easy area for my group to comment on to help me out here).  The truth of actions…what the hell is that?  Are we not able to speak the truth of actions?  I may be too literal here, but I think that the truth of actions can be seen in their reactions, which doesn’t always involve writing.  If you watch me drop potassium into water, the reaction speaks for itself doesn’t it?  In fact, I think I could mime the results to someone and get the truth of action across, without speech or writing.  Perhaps this is what Kress means by saying that the truth of how the world looks is reached via the mode of image, that you have to observe something in order to see its truth.  This is completely “DUH.”  I think that Kress just wanted a powerful sentence to end this essay, but this one is pretty meh.  I’m guilty of doing this too, especially after being burnt out at the end of a paper, but seriously…am I missing something in this quote?  I don’t know.  Here’s a *true* butterfly. 

    

The Conventionally Beautiful Become Ghosts

More or less how I gloss over ads with pretty women.
We see she's attractive, but hollow. Form without core.

It was a strange coincidence that these readings were assigned a few days after my S/O and I had a discussion about whether or not we even notice 'conventionally' beautiful women anymore.  Women like the one in Wysocki's example completely oversaturate the majority of consumable media, to the point of desensitivity (not sure if that's a word, but it is now).  When I'm browsing a magazine, which is probably only in the doctor's office (so once every decade), of course I notice the ad with the partially clothed woman.  However, it's more like I am aware that it's there and what it contains, but don't ever bother to pay any real conscious attention.  I end up assuming that I know the form of the ad and have some sort of preconditioned template to produce a static image in my head, but there is no real stimulation or element of engagement involved.  Of course, I enjoy the female anatomy a great deal, and I've also seen enough of it to know what's realistic and what is wildly over exaggerated.  See the .GIF on Anjeli's blog post for reference.  This image alone made me realize that this isn't just a 'sticky embrace' of male dominant constructs vs. female realism, but it's an issue of age as well.  Unless the ad is for menopause supplements or Depends, models are airbrushed and distorted to look like girls instead of women.  Why could this be?  I think, at least partially, the juxtaposition of nudity against youth evokes a feeling of innocence in the viewer.  Innocence is perhaps more rare than beauty, so when our eye stumbles across it we can't help but marvel over it.  How does this look in conversation with Jamieson's point, in reference to only being taken seriously in public speech if it is in "manly" form?  How can we simultaneously value the aesthetic of innocence and the abandonment of (as Anjeli listed it:) "feelings, intuition, desire for intimacy, relationships, and peace."  Aren't these all constituents of what makes up innocence?  Perhaps this disconnect exists because we've been conditioned to separate what looks good and what sounds good.  Which seems strange, because ultimately to enjoy one of these things, you must ignore the other.

Returning back to my original thought process concerning how easy it is to overlook conventional beauty these days, I began to think about how and why styles/fashion shift to accommodate the ever-evolving perception of beauty.  It's easy to get bored of the same recycled perspective, so it becomes necessary to alter it here and there.  Take these trending high-waisted booty shorts all over campus for example.  Only a few years ago, the style was low rise 'just below the hip' with butt-cheeks fully covered.  Apparently we got bored of that, so designers decided we needed to see more cheek, and less belly.  There's nothing wrong with this, but it's interesting that style shifts are usually an effort to draw more attention to one's self, so that one can be noticed, and then pondered about whether or not they are conventionally beautiful.  

After reading both of these pieces, I had a tough time finding the relation to our class, but Brett's post summed it up pretty well by saying that the big picture is about visual hierarchy.  So what's important currently, visually speaking?  The soft curves of the female anatomy are certainly high on the list for advertising companies, but this image is partially a catalyst for what's really important universally: change and accommodation for socially shifting definitions of beauty, delivered in a time sensitive window.  Otherwise, we'd skim everything without pausing to notice anything at all.

    

 

 

           

The Rhythm of Speech

The concept for this video was to take various quotes and maxims about music, and make them musical.  If I had known how difficult this was going to be, I would have tried to come up with a different concept, but once I started it felt like I had to keep going.  Originally, I read the quotes along to a metronome, which made it a lot easier to groove along to, because it was in perfect time.  The trouble with that approach was that the speech was very unnatural sounding, and not an accurate representation of real speech.  Instead, I ended up reading each quote normally, and analyzing the wave form in Logic Pro X in order to pick out the transients and form a rhythm.  I laid down just a basic bass drum/snare hits to serve as the back bone for composing the piano around, and later added more to the drums.  I wanted to match my vocal inflections harmonically, so that it would seem that the piano was 'reading' along with me.
The most difficult part of this whole project was synchronizing the video to such a weird composition.  Aside from the intro and outro, which are a little more structured than the middle, I had to record 1-2 notes at a time instead of playing it from start to finish.  Because of this, most of the footage of me playing is not in tandem with what you're actually hearing.  Instead, it's the footage of me working out (and often failing) the parts.  I used GoPro studio to compile the video/titles/audio, but I composed all the audio in Logic.  Enjoy this hot avant-garde mess.  

This Is Not.

This improv comedy genius blew my rhetorical mind the first time I saw him perform.

Understanding Comics is an interesting approach to defining the line between what is art and what is writing.  Often, these two concepts intertwine, but we get hung up on our strange word associations that create boundaries for *clean* interpretations.  I particularly liked chapter 2, where McCloud breaks down the fact that nothing is really what we say it is, especially if it is represented on paper.  The fact that "this is not a pipe" and "SPLAT is not a sound" is simple enough to understand, but still a huge concept.  Reaching back to some of our earlier readings, the realization that things are not at all what they seem to be reinforces the idea that we are living in a somewhat simulated environment--a matrix.  However, it's a pretty realistic simulation; one that we would probably all buy into if we weren't exposed to a constant stream of theories that try to debunk our worldly construct.  And that makes me wonder, in light of Alex's post last week...is it rhetorically responsible to debunk our matrix?  Or is it irresponsible to take the world apart without really knowing how to put it back together?   Oddly, this question is also asking, do we stay put and learn to be satisfied, or do we venture into the unknown, ignorant but hopeful that we can create a better construct? 

McCloud's book itself is a super cool concept, but an acquired taste, especially for those of us that never read comics.  I made it to page ten, reading every word on every page, and then my eyes drifted to read only the pictures until about page 20.  I probably missed some things like definitions, but overall I don't think I missed a whole lot of content by ignoring the words.  This is one example of proving whether or not art can be writing; if I can summarize roughly the same amount as someone who read all words and no pictures, then it's a pretty even exchange rate of information.  That being said, combining pictures and words is a lot more for the reader to process, and therefore a little more mentally exhausting.  It's probably a learned skill, something that you get faster at with practice, but as a beginner, it can be a little distracting.  I'm stretching a bit here, but this reminds me of what it's like to help the elderly check their email (yeah, I'm in with the old crowd.  They write fat checks.)  They think every fucking side ad is something that needs to be clicked, as if the advertising companies are trying to be helpful by providing shortcuts to their inbox.  Modern folk (for lack of a better term) almost don't see the ads at all, because we got used to filtering them out.  For the elderly, it's visual overload, so they fall prey to advertising's cheap tricks.  Similarly, while reading McCloud's book, I'm not sure where to look, and if I come across a page with too much, I skip ahead for something a little more bite-sized.

Kinda what it's like to read Understanding Comics

"But if who I am matters less, maybe what I say will matter more" (McCloud, 37).  Damn, what a concept.  And I think I buy it, although I'm sure that there are plenty of people in history who said nothing of importance, yet their names are well known.  And the flipside is true as well; tons of thought provoking maxims are credited as anonymous, because whoever said it first wasn't famous enough to get credit.  This circles back to the "shit happens" principle.  Really, none of us matter, and some last minute thesis paper we write may be quoted in history books 200 years from now.  Similarly, a thesis that has taken years to develop with some really crucial findings may become buried underneath a pseudo-intellectual-philosophical twitter feed, because it had more followers or however the hell twitter works.  What does this mean for us?  Make every sentence count, write it as if you intend to be quoted throughout the ages.  Of course this type of diligence can be exhausting, and unrealistic.  But wouldn't it be a real bitch if you were remembered for saying some stupid shit that you really only typed to meet your word count, or complete your blogging quota?  Maybe we should be a little more conservative with our words, and only say something when we are really inspired to weigh in on a topic to eliminate a mountain of bullshit.  But then again, if we take on this perspective, we may never find an appropriate time to talk/write, because it seems like we all have to publicly vomit all of our rambling before we can get to the real substance of our thoughts.      

     

Customize Your Personality With Our New Custom Personality Generator!

It's pretty cool that we are far enough along in our understanding of composition that our assigned text revolves around the expansion of teaching composition.  I know Wysocki isn't the only writing scholar who is making an effort to progress our field (technologically speaking), but the existence of her book, Writing New Media, is a pretty significant contribution.  After reading the first 20 pages, I thought this was much like watching an ant try to roll the universe uphill, because there is such a huge amount of technology that needs to be implemented into education in order to keep things relevant.  But then again, I suppose that's how massive tasks get accomplished, one ant and one 'budge' at a time.  I guess even being a part of this course means that we are doing our own amount of budging.  Since our assigned reading was essentially an introduction, I don't have any quotes to pull out for credibility's sake.  Instead, I'll just elaborate on the notes I jotted down while I read.

There is some amount of irony in the fact that I own the kindle version of this text.  I always opt for the kindle versions, because they're cheaper, but mostly because you can use the "Ctrl+F" function to seek out specific keywords and ideas.  Or, more realistically, you can write a paper about something you haven't read but seem to know where all the supporting evidence for your argument is.  Wysocki seems to be familiar with this trick though, because she made all of her arguments in bold so that your eyes know when to stop skimming.  I appreciate the hell out of this, even though I originally felt 'caught' in the act, I realized it takes one to know one.  Although our generation may have come up with the term "TL;DR (too long;didn't read), I'm pretty sure everyone who has ever been through any level of education makes a serious effort to only read the necessary sentences.  Making them in bold really helps a fella out.

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I once again really identified with Wysocki's idea throughout p. 4 where she explains that school is constructed in a way that makes our education seem practical only if there is an assumed "degree agenda."  Seeing as I dwelt on that in last week's blog, I thought I'd comment on the bit in parentheses, where she says that another literal boundary that school has is it's physical structure and unlikeness to other social spaces in the world.  I had never thought about that before...we basically go to college to learn how to get jobs in the real world, and the place we go to learn this information is NOTHING like the real world.  Weird shit. 

When Wysocki was discussing the implications and behavioral responses to webpages, it got me thinking about the ghetto days of MySpace.  Although I've never had a Facebook, I had MySpace back in 7-8th grade, and became addicted to its customizability.  Literally every facet of the webpage could be altered, with almost no limitations.  I was a pre-Hot Topic goth kid at the time, which meant that I had to have the darkest, most shocking page imaginable.  I spent forever combing the web for obscure fonts, disturbing images, ungodly music, and cool html effects to make sure I could represent...well, whatever the hell I thought I had to prove at that age.  I might not have had the theoretical knowledge at the time, but I knew that every single thing I put on my page had to be deliberate because it directly reflected on my character.  Wysocki says, "there is little or nothing that asks composers and readers to see and then question the values implicit in visual design choices, for such design is often presented as having no value other than functionality..." (Wysocki, 6).  I guess that's something I knew in some loose form back then as well.  Most things are just sort of casually scanned, with a neutral response.  Maybe that's why I used to (and still do, to a lesser degree) get my kicks out of shock value; you can always get an obvious response.        

(In)Significance

Things can only be what we think they are.  We lack full perspective to see otherwise.

(Apologies for the previous terrible formatting of this post, had to repost it entirely)

 It seems that we are really driving home this concept of being trapped within the confines of our own societal framework.  The further along I get in education, the more I see how trivial learning is in the big scheme of things, because we are essentially just reproducing the elements of our culture over and over again.  To me, it seems like we aren't getting anywhere new in terms of perspective and classifying our world.  Could it really be that our first notion for a societal narrative was the correct one, and that's why we've kept pursuing it?  Or is it more likely that we came up with something that the majority of our peers could grasp, so we decided to pursue it by default?  In either case, all concepts can become stale with time, and maybe that's why so many of us (especially in younger years) have a bad taste in our mouth about the structure of education.  

Everything we think we know is really just a long string of historical invention, thought up by someone who was as equally insignificant as we all are.  Fisher acknowledges Burke for referring to this dilemma as the "unending conversation" that we are all a part of as soon as we exist (Fisher, 381).  It's unfortunate, because we are a part of this construct whether we agree with it or not, and cannot even be heard in our disagreement until we submit to the very construct we disagree with.  With this perspective, it seems that we can only become significant in the big scheme if we become a notable contributor to the unending conversation.  For those of us that accept this naturalism, there is comfort in having a clear cut task to become significant; study and critique the history of theories that came before you until you find an anomaly, then exploit that anomaly so that you will be remembered and quoted for truth, and the earlier theorist fades away with time.  For those of us who find this naturalism oppressive, life can seem a bleak and pointless endeavor.  

While there is obviously no clear-cut meaning of life, the majority of us share the appetite for the pursuit of purpose.  Upon realizing that all purpose fits into a construct set forth by a long string of dead people before me, who are only known today because the constructs of naturalism and literacy demand that they be known, it becomes obvious that everything is made up.  Fisher speaks to this directly, noting, "the effects of naturalism have been to restrict the rational world paradigm to specialized studies and relegate everyday argument to an irrational exercise" (Fisher, 380).  This quote really hit me hard, because I agree with it so whole-heartedly, yet it serves to undermine every dollar I've ever spent on college tuition.  Some days, it's difficult to want to contribute to classroom discussions, because even in the biggest "AH HA!" moments, it's all really just an exercise that leads to nowhere and nothing, except another argument/conversation.  This seems completely irrational when considered as a one-time event.  It seems downright insane to do this over and over again for 4+ years, and PAY to do it.  However, our narrative makes it rational because we have constructed the system in such a way that proof of 4+ years of irrational argument (also known as a Bachelor's Degree) leads to a higher probability of landing a decent paying job.

Wysocki-Eilola seem to be asking the right questions in regards to how we go about breaking out of this narrative shell.  "Why aren't we instead working to come up with other terms and understandings--other more complex expressions--of our relationship with and within technologies?" (Wysocki-Eilola, 360).  This question brings me right back to the issue of significance.  I bet there are quite a few people that frequently use other terms and understandings to communicate complex expressions, but we'd likely interpret them as disturbed individuals, because they'd be speaking (or telepathing/miming/???) outside of our universe of understanding.  These types of people have, in fact, come up with something *new*, but those of us within the standard narrative lack the perception to be able to interpret their communication with any amount of significance.  I'm not suggesting that the mentally ill hold the secrets of the universe, but what I'm trying to illustrate is the fact that we have very limited perception, and the concepts that Wysocki/Eilola/Fisher are looking for can only lie outside of our perception, and therefore can never be seen until we open a third eye, so to speak.          

Intro to Adam Schreuder

Here are the main things about me.

Changing Reality, Or Stuck In It?

I've become pretty familiar with rhetoric in the past few semesters, but it's an elusive construct that I always have to redefine for myself at the start of each class.  The issues discussed in our readings were ones that I've encountered before, but a few key phrases caused me to want to play devil's advocate.

Reality can get kinda weird and produce stuff like this.  But even in the abstract, we would describe everything in this picture by using other things that already exist.

  Grant Davie says that "a rhetorical situation is a situation where a speaker or writer sees a need to change reality and sees that the change may be effected by rhetorical discourse" (265).  This is a pretty bold statement, because it assumes that all speaking or writing changes reality.  Does this mean that we are unable to talk or write 'casually' for lack of a better word?  Must each utterance be an effort to do something as drastic as changing the reality we know little by little?  I'd like to think that there are some moments of communication that occur simply because we are alive and passing time, taking a break from shifting reality.  But the more I think about this, the harder it is to deny that everything has some sort of chain reaction.  For example, I might be talking about the plot to The Scarlett Letter (not sure why) and cause my significant other to think internally, "Letter...Mail comes around noon...OH SHIT I forgot to put the check for the energy bill in the mailbox!" I changed reality without meaning to, and without "seeing" a need to change reality.  The point of all this is to say simply, yeah, we can change reality with writing and talking but at the same time, shit just happens whether rhetoric exists (or is invented) or not.

Taking another perspective on this topic, Porter seems to think that we may not be changing reality at all, because we are intertextually "within the confines of a well-regulated system" (40).  Within this system is the impossibility of originality, because anything we can think to create relies on thinking about creation, which already exists.  We cannot change reality because everything has already occurred before the point of occurrence, otherwise we could not understand what the hell was happening.  Porter goes on to say that these limitations aren't as bleak as they seem, because "Even if the writer is locked into a cultural matrix and is constrained by the intertext of the discourse community, the writer has freedom within the immediate rhetorical context" (41).  This brings to mind the image of a solitary confinement prisoner, begging for just one minute of time outside, while the guard shrugs and says, "I don't see what all the fuss is about.  You have 8X10 feet to walk around in there."

Maybe it's not that bad.  After all, Porter says that really successful writing can help to "redefine this matrix" (42).  To borrow Doug's pet peeve, how the fuck do we "describe the thing by using the thing we are trying to describe as a description?"  If all definitions exist in the matrix, simply arranging them in a different order does not redefine anything.

On an entirely different note, one more element of Grant-Davie's article stood out to me as a writer, where they explained that "Vatz argues that rhetors not only answer the question, they also ask it" (265).  This was essentially saying that a situation does not exist until a rhetor begins to think of something as a situation.  I think I can buy this, if we are talking purely about the issue of perspective.  This means that we are creating a situation by approaching the delivery of a message (be it orally or written) as a situation.  In essence, because we have a word to associate with a particular notion, that word being "situation," we create this construct ourselves.  Well, sure we do!  We construct everything we think we know!  I don't think that necessarily means that situations cannot exist without rhetors.  As writers, there will be countless situations that arise independent of us, that then cause people to turn to us to write something about their situation.  For example, I just had to write a eulogy today for a woman that I met once, 10 years ago.  The question that begs for a eulogy is death.  The answer for the creation of a eulogy is writing.  I provided the answer here, but did not ask any of the questions.  Whether I wrote the eulogy or not, the situation existed whether or not I did.