Go behaves as an agent that enables new viewing practices by forming connections between different parts of the assemblage including viewers, industry, texts and related technology.
Go is a new agent here. Much like the internet, it allows multiple agents to convene to form a new, single agent
This signals a shift in how television is viewed; live television can now be viewed without the need for a television set.
I'm wondering if the tv set will eventually be obsolete
It enables computers, tablets and phones to do what just a few years ago only the television set could do
distributing agency
One of the most interesting aspects of Go is that it incorporates a number of functions that were previously distributed amongst different technological devices such as the television set, the remote control, the set top box, and the Personal Digital
"Go" is an assemblage of agency
television has always been a hybrid medium
I'm confused as to how it was ever thought of a non-hybrid medium
If we understand multiplatform television as an assemblage that is constantly forming new connections between viewers, texts, technologies, polices and practices, we can imagine a virtual realm full of possible outcomes. However, it is difficult to predict which will be actualised and which will remain in the realm of the virtual. This sense of contingency and chance means that social and cultural television formations are open to the new and unthought rather than limited to fixed relations.
We circle back to the hyperreal and the real... Digital space embodies rhetoric but does it also confuse it? This also relates to the idea of agency. We mentioned the problem with cyberbullying and how people feel protected behind a screen; is it because the digital space shares some agency with them? Are they working on the contingency that no one finds their actual identity?
exploring emergent properties.
Rhetoric emerging through various agents?
binaries and hierarchies such as production/consumption, producer/audience, industry/consumer and even technologies/text.
The digital blurs these binary divisions. Producers are also audiences, consumers can produce their own content and are not limited to one producer, viewers can also produce content...
Unlike fixed structures that always act in the same way and produce the same outcomes, assemblages introduce new possibilities.
We could benefit from thinking of rhetoric as an assemblage; we have five modes to work with and countless outlets for composition. I don't think this proves that digital rhetoric is more pervasive, though... I'm honestly quite torn on this topic.
with binary relations
Oh, the binary.
As old connections disappear and new ones form, it changes quantitatively, in terms of the number of connections it has:
Also, the digital allows us more connection than pen and paper
It also allows us to consider how agency is reshuffled, as new connections are formed between new kinds of devices, texts, practices and applications.
Agency is slowly being transferred to the user. We are no longer passively watching our scheduled programming.
As Goggin notes assemblage theory ‘questions the constitution, production, and reproduction of the social, pointing to how particular objects suggest different conceptions, ordering and politics
I prefer this definition; it hints at the transformation from viewer to user and how multimodality influences our concepts of content.
For Joke Hermes television and television viewing is so vastly different than it once was that ‘we are in need of evaluating what television is about and, perhaps also, of updating our theoretical frame-work to understand the medium’
It's so interesting that these advances are forcing us to reevaluate what we once thought about media and content. We are literally developing a new rhetorical situation. I'm not sure if Plato would be proud, considering that most of us cannot go speak with authors and directors, but he might see it as a step forward.
In the midst of this change at least three new and distinct functions stand out: pay per view, search and retrieve, and upload and share.
We already have a new rhetorical situation here: viewers are no longer simply viewers. They are users and they interact with their television
Empowerment and the agency of audiences has been a contested aspect of digital media.
Connection to Reeves' idea of structured flow
For example, José van Dijck challenges the idea that online platforms like YouTube signal any shift in media power because they mine the metadata of users in order to target advertising to individuals
Not a shift in who has power, just in how they use/maintain it
can limit their exposure to different kinds of programmes and different perspectives
"echo chamber" in Reeves' flow
It enables us to not only to consider current television formations, but to contemplate how these connect and relate to past formations, and possible future formations.
The assemblages, all the possibilities- this is what we had, this is what we have, and what will we get?
The years of stability that Uricchio refers to could be understood as precisely a set of links that reinforce particular arrangements and by doing so block other possibilities. However, digital technology has enabled new links to form that open up the television assemblage to new forms of production and new forms of engagement.
Interesting use of the word "links" here. Are there underlying connotations?
beckons viewers to become engaged and to become players rather than passive viewers.
interactive media rather than the "lazy viewer"
This means taking into account that children are not tied to temporal modes of viewing based on schedules and other expectations to do with broadcast television such as high production standards and established genres.
What does this mean for the future of television?
what is lost in this new formation?
We move "forward" but at what costs? Privacy? Interaction?
If we think about these components as simply the actualisation of a number of possible virtulalities, then it becomes apparent that their actualisation is contingent on a variety of tendencies coming together and not the result of a linear logic.
No linear logic involved? Well what then of math problems and science experiments that lead to possibilities (virtulalities) and realizations (actualisations). Those seem like linear logic paths to me...
the actual is always informed and influenced by the virtual and that, while the virtual may have an infinite number of possibilities, only some are actualised
The possibilities versus what becomes reality. The infinite versus the finite.
Firstly, agency cannot be attributed to any one component or actant, human or non-human but emerges from the association of different parts.
The various sums of parts change and create change not necessarily the parts themselves. Like a person involved in a social or political movement. The person adds to the movement and is a part of it, but it is the movement that affects change.
as the nature of the system changes, its capacities or what it enables, also change. DeLanda discusses this process in terms of emergent properties.
Ripple effect. If one think changes it is bound to affect other things, even if they are not obvious.
First, because assemblages form new connections with the outside, the social itself becomes open to change.
Disruptions enter and question why things are the way they are and how they could change, this is very obvious in technology and business, subtle at social level.
the concept of assemblages provides a means of accounting for the formation of new kinds of connections between discrete devices, texts and applications, at times across different mediums. It enables us to think about how previous and current devices, texts and medium are reconfigured and adopt new functionalities or are modified, so as to display new qualities.
The potential possibilities, by taking the pieces and rearranging them, taking some out, and adding in some new we create new things.
change and transformation are not simply ‘characteristics of the medium’s current phase but more generally [are] one of television’s integral features’
the transformative nature of television. While we think of it as the one thing in our living rooms, tv is really a conglomerate (aka collection of appendages)
Internet TV
Combining two forms of media onto one device
Fixed social structures produce an impoverished form of agency because agency always belongs to the same components or groups.
Comments on the possibility of television to be an oppressive environment (not to mention a stale form of entertainment).
This unique function addresses a society as a whole and reinforces a sense of nationhood and citizenship.
This function also leaves broadcast television particularly susceptible to those who would spread excessive nationalism in service of that "sense of nationhood and citizenship."
This means taking into account that children are not tied to temporal modes of viewing based on schedules and other expectations to do with broadcast television such as high production standards and established genres.
I always thought it was odd that my nephew would watch obviously homemade YouTube videos (so long as they featured Spider-Man) with the same excitement as he would have watching studio-made professional productions. Sometimes more even.
This is no small matter when we consider the scenario described at the start of this essay, where as little as ten years ago not only did viewers have very little control over where and when they watch television, but they also had to deal with incredibly cumbersome technology.
At the time, I'm sure that technology was considered anything but "incredibly cumbersome." Just as I'm sure that in my lifetime, I'll see a day where the use of something as portable as say a tablet will be remembered as "incredibly cumbersome."
Go’s search and retrieve logic also challenges a fixed idea of a television schedule that is organised by the scheduling department of a television channel with the aim of enticing viewers to immerse themselves in its flow. Go, on the other hand, is defined by a multiplicity of possibilities that may or may not actualise as schedules. Viewing is no longer reliant on schedules as viewing on Go means choosing programmes from a number of lists and menus that can be swiped through, personalised into favourites or arranged into a number of different playlists. This form of interaction removes programming and scheduling as something that is solely the domain of the industry and reconfigures it into a shared arrangement.
This sort of flow was described in the Reeves article, as was the shift toward highly personalized content.
By doing so, it literally brings new elements into an assemblage that deterritorialises a number of connections fundamental to broadcast television.
This assemblage is physical rather than theoretical.
I’m on the bus. I take out my iPad and open Foxtel’s application the Go. I can watch programmes on 60 live channels, or I can choose from hundreds of shows and movies from the ‘on demand’ menu.
Immediately presenting concrete examples of the major paradigm shift in both space (on the bus) and time (whenever) of television from its original iteration.
a virtualised form of participation.
Reality and game shows still do not represent actual viewer participation, as the participants lose their audience status upon entry.
gender groups at particular times
Some problematic assumptions surrounding those "particular times."
The concept of reciprocal determination is important for challenging the centrality of broadcast television and the idea of television and television culture as something with a fixed and stable structure based on fixed roles, binaries and hierarchies such as production/consumption, producer/audience, industry/consumer and even technologies/text.
Neither side of any of these binaries exists without the other, so in a sense, they are constantly creating one another and renegotiating traditional roles as advances in technology allow for a more communicative experience all around. Throughout the duration of this process, the binaries become less binding, and each party takes on more of the attributes of the other.
These are properties that arise from the interactions of heterogeneous parts so that the assemblage as a whole acquires new attributes. At the same time, the parts of an assemblage retain their unique properties, and do not lose their distinctiveness.
The whole is greater than (or at the very least fundamentally different than) the sum of its parts. This fact, however, does not at all diminish the original natures of the parts, which retain their individual capacities despite their collection into an assemblage.
so that a part may be detached and made a component of another assemblage’
When applied to art or academia, this can refer to the application of interdisciplinarity to create entirely new disciplines such as the art of graphic novels or the study of political science.
More specifically, in this paper I argue that the concept of assemblages provides a means of accounting for the formation of new kinds of connections between discrete devices, texts and applications, at times across different mediums. It enables us to think about how previous and current devices, texts and medium are reconfigured and adopt new functionalities or are modified, so as to display new qualities.
A good deal of modern art seems to be a result of synthesis of preexisting forms rather than an attempt at complete novelty. This is (rightfully) celebrated by those who engage in this sort of remix culture.
‘[p]art of the ‘power of television’ lies in its constant transformation process, enforced by a continuous reflection on the ‘appropriate’ use and an ongoing redefinition of television’
This is true of all of our arts and technologies: language, writing, rhetoric, and composition for the sake of this class, but the same goes for music, radio, art, dance, poetry, animation, and so much more. As repertoires expand and access spreads to capable, creative people with increasingly varied experiences, everything we know becomes overtly temporary in the best possible way.
The emergence of digital, multiplatform television also puts into question many of the central concepts and theories for understanding television and television culture, such as: appointment viewing, mass audiences, liveness and broadcast-flow
These concepts have been expanded on by live-streaming services such as Twitch and Periscope which deliver specialized content to specific audiences and allow for instantaneous feedback, encouraging interaction between content, creators, and audience members, often blurring the lines between the three.
Upload and share practices enable viewers to engage with a show’s interactive material or create and distribute user generated content. These changes have transformed television from a single platform medium into an interactive multiplatform medium that encourages viewer (if this term is still appropriate) participation.
I was anticipating "upload and share" to refer to television piracy, which regardless of morality is a very real and very prominent facet of the modern culture of television worthy of discussion. Maybe later?
hinking about these problems in terms of assemblage theory, we could say that in these instances YouTube is captured and over-coded by molar ordering that reinstitutes a hierarchical structure and a central agent of power.
Think also of Google, Amazon, and Facebook - how they track your searches and purchases in order to advertise to your liking
customisation and personalisation technologies that enable viewers to select programmes according to personal taste can limit their exposure to different kinds of programmes and different perspectives
This is a better argument, and the only thing I can say from experience to challenge this is that I've gained exposure to different genres and programs from "suggestions" or "most popular shows" that apps like Netflix display. These are results from a collaboration of people customizing and personalizing their programs.
By addressing a mass audience, it facilitates a sense of nationhood and enables the spread of important information.
I understand that this entire article focuses on television and its many platforms, I feel like this is where it starts to become very limiting and results in a weak argument because, although this is true, it does not address other factors that dwindle this argument about nationhood. For instance, social media now takes most of the responsibility for dispersing essential issues and information.
LetsPlay channels can be see as one manifestation of these new links,
LetsPlay channels are actualisations of new links, also known as elements in the virtual
In fact, children’s viewing practices should form an important base for how we rethink what television is and what it does, because today’s children have had little or no exposure to television prior to a digital age.
Shifts in generation
They incorporate a mix of television and gaming elements and cultural practices.
How does this change the 'acceptable' uses of television?
‘we have to reshuffle our conceptions of what was associated together because the previous definition has been made somewhat irrelevant’
As I annotated earlier, we give definitions to the things we use simply by the ways that we use them.
At the same time, we could also ask what is lost in this new formation? One possibility is that members of a household act in isolation from each other in relation to planning and scheduling communal viewing.
Communal viewing is only lost because of mobility, but Go's PDR records shows which, I think, actually encourages communal viewing since members of a household can view it at a time most convenient for all of them.
the Foxtel iQ disrupts appointment viewing or a temporal mode of viewing by enabling viewers, to not only record programmes easily (that is without needing to know the start and end time or date) but also ‘create a personal playlist from the pool of programs they have recorded, which can then be watched at the viewer’s convenience’
binge-watching shows emerges from this as well; in particularly, shows that have narration where we are required to watch he show from the first episode in order to understand the rest of the series (House of Cards, Narcos, Game of Thrones, etc.)
mobility becomes an emergent property
mobility is a huge factor that resulted from different digital platforms
At the same time, I am not assuming that prior to multiplatform television viewers were passive, as acts of reading and making meaning are also forms of activity.
I like how the author covers their bases by clarifying and acknowledging this. Anticipating counterarguments is something that is aesthetically appealing in a text.
While this event may be read through a linear cause and effect logic after it has occurred, it is first a series of heterogeneous tendencies that come together to form an expression.
This is striking to think about because most of us would think of the tree bending and falling in terms of a linear cause-and-effect logic rather than thinking about the factors or 'tendencies' individually that form expressions.
processes of deterritorialisation
associated with rhizomatic assemblage because of its ability to destabilize structure and keep an open system
processes of territorialisation
associated with stratified assemblage because of its homogeneous and fixed characteristics
Unlike fixed structures that always act in the same way and produce the same outcomes, assemblages introduce new possibilities.
Fixed structures are considered stratified assemblages, aren't they? The shift in word usage makes this a little confusing. Rhizomatic assemblages introduce new possibilities.
rhizome, clearly meant a series of transformations, translations, transductions, which could not be captured by any of the traditional terms of social theory’ (Latour, 1999:15).
Because social theory itself does not recognize transformations or change
As Latour argues, social theory privileges stability and tends to structure the social around fixed terms and binaries such as ‘actor and system, or agency and structure’ (Latour, 1999: 16)
a relationship between rhetoric and humanism
The concept of assemblages takes into consideration the way television culture can be deterritorialised and reterritorialised, so that new functionalities and qualities are introduced.
I watched a Wordpress tutorial about child themes, and the instructor explained this type of concept by using a car made of legos. He said that we can deconstruct it and reconstruct it using the same set of legos in order to build something with new functionalities and qualities. This is how I view the concept of assemblages.
LetsPlay channels put into question the idea of television as a stable medium, and invite us to rethink what television is and what it can be.
LetsPlay channels allow the viewer an extensive, inside glimpse into a video game, with added commentary from the channel's gamer, allowing them to "play" allow with the gamer they are viewing.
LetsPlay
Live (video) gaming streaming.
Viewers are therefore no longer bound to the television set to watch live television.
Mobility and convenience.
However, unlike mobile phones and tablets which promote mobility, I would argue that these home based technologies attempt to maintain the television set as the privileged site for viewing and the home as a central location.
Further arguing that television that once was an event, still remains an event that has the luxury of being played at the comfort of your own home.
Go and apps like it offer new lines of connections that potentially reformulate television culture by deterritorialising appointment, mass and home viewing.
Online streaming anywhere and anytime.
Foxtel Go is one of a number of television applications (or ‘apps’) that enable viewers to watch television on different devices.
Basic online streaming service.
broadcast television offers viewers very few opportunities to actively participate in the media texts that they are directed to consume
Little to no audience participation. Possible exception of news stations asking for audience feedback ("Send us your pictures of the storm," "Tweet us," etc.).
broadcast television is a highly organised structure that revolves around a centre of significance, tends toward homogeneity and produces images and representations for viewers to consume.
Broadcast television is a binary structure.
reciprocal determination
Theory that a person's behavior both influences and is influenced by personal factors and the social environment.
deterritorialisation
The severance of social, political, or cultural practices from their native places and populations.
rhizomatic assemblage
Theory that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation.
social as a constantly stable structure
Social aspects remain unchanged and stable.
television once had a stable identity that is now being called into question
Television used to be an event. Everyone in the household would gather around the television at a certain time and a certain day and all watch a program together. With new ways to access television shows, this togetherness has dissolved; the audience no longer adapts their time in order to watch a show, but a show adapts to fit around the viewer's schedule.
1950 and 1980
This time period helped set the foundations for television. Rizzo is arguing that, in the long run, this time period will only be considered a brief period rather than a vital time.
[p]art of the ‘power of television
Television has the power to inform, persuade, challenge, entertain, and much more to a mass audience.
viewers can access their favourite shows in a number of different ways
On-demand, online streaming, etc.
assemblages
Collection or gathering of people or things.
ex falso quodlibet
Mediaeval name for the rule of inference which allows that from a contradiction you may deduce anything whatsoever.
symbolic placeholders for binary switches: on/off, +/-, yes/no, is/is-not
Zeroes and ones are numerical in a binary sense, but represent symbols that represent switches that lead to an overall meaning.
The age of media is over, for there is now only one medium
There is one media, but rather, one medium: everything online is data and is made up of a code or type of coding language. It's definitely an interesting point that I haven't previously considered before.
aphorism
Speaking of a general truth in a memorable way ("If it ain't broke, don't fix it.").
hypomnesis
Weakened memory.
amamnesis
The idea that humans possess knowledge from past incarnations and that learning consists of rediscovering that knowledge within us. (live and learn?)
Digital ontology is the event of the end of media
Very interesting.
One must be able to communicate to be considered a being and to exist.
full-blown metaphysics of ‘being
This raises the question of what it means to be. Can a computer "be" and exist without human interaction? Does a computer need a human to input or output information?
web 2.0 practices
HTML, CSS, and other coding languages.
displacing ‘the human’ from the centre of action
Lack of embodiment in a digital sphere?
ever-growing excess of data
It is both interesting and a little scary to think that anyone can post online and that anyone can also access anything that anyone has posted as well. I think that this can really change the way we produce texts, but can also cause problems.
When modulating some digital data into a display state and experiencing it as an image (say, in order to show a picture of your child to a friend on your phone),
If this is the way things are, how do we think of ourselves? Are we display states?
Later, we will see how this could help us also understand immanently digital entities and their relationship to the world.
Think about how we consider digital entities. We consider them entities, but do they have agency? Are they rhetors, or are they just mediums?
there are no longer any media, saying, “with numbers, everything goes […] a digital base will erase the very concept of medium”
'media' doesn't exist; we only have data that we view on different digital platforms
technics
Hood gives the traditional definition of technology originating with Aristotle as “a human arrangement of technics—tools, machines, instruments, materials, sciences, and personnel—to make possible and serve the attainment of human ends” (Hood, 1983, p. 347).
Philosophy of Technology- Erwin Marquit, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
Published in vol. 13 of the Encyclopedia of Applied Physics (entry “Technology, Philosophy of”), pp. 417–29. VCH Publishers, Weinheim, Germany, 1995.
Or, to put this differently, we have argued that: logic is the medium of being, insofar as it inscribes the necessity of pure minimal differences before contradiction; mathematics the medium that concretises minimal differences into consistency-without-phenomenal-identity as the possibility of any actualisation; technics the actualising medium of modulating these consistencies in turn. This tripartite distinction—difference, consistency, modulation—entails that all phenomenal presentations are at once infinitely variable as they are entirely constrained in specific ways.
The use of medium as a way of discussing digital ontology makes sense: logic as medium of being, mathematics as a substantiating medium, and technics as the medium of modulation and actualization.
otiose
serving no practical purpose or result.
(Google)
Yet our point here is that, at base, the digital is a model of logic, not a specific technology (Chun, 2011: 140). Second, and just as importantly, because the physical reality of the computer is an electronic and magnetic enactment of this logic, it is impossible to ever identify any specific being of digital data, since the ‘movement’ of data back and forth between disks, RAM (Random Access Memory), caches and registers on the CPU (Central Processing Unit), is in fact a constant process of modulation between states of magnetic polarity or electric charge in these physical objects. Because of this, it is impossible to say that any given bit of digital data is even the same as itself, or point to its localisation or appearance in the world as a criterion or determinant of its identity, laying bare the fundamental spuriousness of the concept of a ‘copy.’ Data’s ‘identity’ is a pure, non-phenomenal, distributed-cohering-across-materials. And, ‘underneath’ that, there are simply absolutely minimal differences or pure binaries—which are thus differences-without-identity, not subject to the laws of non-contradiction.
Here again, there is this summation and recontextualization of what is meant by digital and the ambivalence of identity as a result of modulation and display states.
ferromagnetic
(of a body or substance) having a high susceptibility to magnetization, the strength of which depends on that of the applied magnetizing field, and that may persist after removal of the applied field. This is the kind of magnetism displayed by iron and is associated with parallel magnetic alignment of neighboring atoms.
(Google)
digital ontology as founded on pure differences established by the primacy of excluded middle, data should be considered a hyperdifferentiated consistency without identity. We thereby reiterate and extend our fundamental point about digital data, which is that it scrambles inherited metaphysical polarities. The principle of excluded middle rules the foundations of the digital universe, not the principle of non-contradiction. Digital ontology is paraconsistent, not classical or intuitionist.
So, in a sense, digital ontology is dualistic, but with a caveat— digital data "scrambles inherited metaphysical polarities." Therefore, it creates an monistic effect while underlining the paradoxical concept of paraconsistency, rejecting the "classical or intuitionist."
incommensurable
not able to be judged by the same standard as something; having no common standard of measurement.
(Google)
Yet recent developments in logic—those broadly denominated ‘paraconsistent’—have attempted to construct logical systems in which contradictions are not necessarily ‘explosive.’ In traditional propositional logic, everything follows from a contradiction, but variants of para-consistent logic propose otherwise. As Greg Restall explains: Paraconsistent logics are distinctive in that they do not mandate explosion. […] Instead, for paraconsistent logics the entailment fails […] in the semantics for these logics there are interpretations in which A and -A may both be taken to be true, but in which not everything is true (Restall, 2006: 76). - 36 - It is essential here to understand that paraconsistency separates out contradiction from consistency, such that certain contradictions might be true, without all of them being so. Whereas consistency and the foreclosure-of-contradiction are identical in classical and intuitionist logics, this is not the case for paraconsistent ones. Moreover, this situation establishes the actuality that there may well be many different modes of constructing logical systems, even a kind of logical pluralism. This reopens the old question regarding the foundations of logic in a radical new fashion. - 37 - What we want to underline is that the instantiation of Boolean logic in post-war computing led very quickly to the appearance of a vacillation in the data computers were handling, such that paraconsistent logics initially came to be developed “to prevent computers, such as expert medical systems, from deducing anything whatsoever from contradictory data… because of the principle of ex falso quodlibet” (Meillasoux, 2009: 76). [12] Unlike regimes governed by classical logic, then, such a digital ontology would render pure difference (not identity) fundamental; unlike intuitionist logic, digital ontology could also affirm actual infinities. One corollary is the possibility, even actuality, perhaps even necessity, of true contradictions; another is the patency of contingency in any modulation.
The concept of paraconsistency allows room for paradoxes to occur without the collapse of the logical system. This seems within the spirit of postructuralist rhetoric.
But we, four, disagree that ontology must be classical, as well as, five, that logic can only describe (and therefore does not prescribe) existents. So it is time for us to bring together all the points we have made above into a clear and distinct summary of digital ontology.
Here's the difference from Badiou.
they are ideological in this new sense, that they are produced on the basis of absolute binary operations whose operations vanish in the presentation of numbers, thereby also remodulating the data they present. The very organisation of data through various forms of modulation puts all sorts of pressures on the numbers that numbers themselves cannot say (Mackenzie, 2012: 335–350). We are thus committed here to understanding the digital as prior to number. Above all, we use this fact as a hint in our construction of a digital ontology. We maintain that it is vital to understand that to construct a digital ontology is to have recourse to a logical and not a mathematical ontology. But what does this mean?
The concept of ideology enters the conversation in an interesting way: since data is fundamentally represented in "absolute binary operations," the numbers are the substance of the ideology, and the ideological apparatus could be said to be the forms of modulation, where numbers are interpellated as subjects of that ideology, where the forms "put all sorts of pressures on the numbers that the numbers themselves cannot say."
The move to pure quantities is far easier to understand when we accept the numerical as simply another parameter in the modulation process between data and its display, and may help us move closer to an understanding of the relationship between the contemporary technical interdependence of virtual/material and the Deleuzian interdependence of virtual/actual (Nash, 2012).
Here, digital as an ontological metaphor is further clarified as numerical is represented as a parameter of modulation rather than the "substance" of being.
it is that the unprecedented powers of thought and action that derive from the electrification of Boolean algebra first established by Shannon, and now incarnated globally in the form of contemporary computing, must have some fundamental anchoring in ‘being’ for it to function at all (Shannon, 1937). Second, this means that to speak of ‘digital media’ is not simply to speak of a set of hardware and software components developed by a particular species on a particular planet at a particular time using particular materials: it is rather to be given a new access to being itself, and one which must thereafter guide our thinking of natural processes more generally. Third, if there remains something unthought in the Wolfram-Fredkin hypothesis, it is simply that there is something preprogrammed, indeed too representational, about the direct projection of a contemporaneously-dominant media paradigm onto being itself. Moreover, if the social conditions of such a projection are occluded, then we should expect such an occlusion to create certain symptoms too; not least the immediate carrying-across of a number of features of contemporary computing to nature itself in an unjustified manner. What we wish to do here, then, is radicalise the Wolfram-Fredkin hypothesis along logical lines. Above all, we agree that when we speak about the ‘digital,’ this must have an extension far greater than simply referring to the actualities of new media, at the same time that these new media must simultaneously function as our primary mode of access to this recognition. But we disagree that the universe is a computer. We believe, rather, that being is digital, if in a very particular sense.
Here, there is a summation of the basic argument and a refutation of the idea of the universe as a computer. The concept of "being is digital" then remediates the word digital into a way of negotiating meaning through the understanding of being and reality through the apparatus of modulation and display state, from the unmodified to the experienced, from the non-ontological to that which is conceptualized.
at all other times it exists as unmodulated digital data with no clear ontological state. This is true of all digital data. These may perhaps be termed ‘immanently digital entities,’ and could be said to be true of any and all of the excess of data created by the use of digital data and networks. ‘Likes’ and ‘friends’ and ‘photos’ and ‘text’ and ‘links’ and ‘Tweets’ and ‘followers’ and all other ostensibly differentiable digital phenomena–some of these may have identifiable provenance in the non-digital world, and some may be uniquely generated by and in the digital sphere, but all can be said to be ‘immanently digital entities.’ It is this problem, unique to the non-medium of the digital, that leads thinkers such as those mentioned above to concepts of ‘inorganic life’ and technogenesis, as well as scientists like Stephen Wolfram and Edward Fredkin to posit—in a move emblematic of Kittler’s assertion that “media determine our situation”—an hypothesis of the universe as a digital computer (Kittler, 1999: xxxix; Chaitin, 1999: 108).
The unmodifed raw data exists in kind of a formless state, before it is modulated into a display state. This analogy of the universe as a digital computer kind of sounds like a borrowing from some Eastern ontological ideas like that of Hinduism and the Purusha Sukta from the Rigveda, where the universe is a kind of display state that results from a modulation of consciousness within the godhead, or create force manifest as a deity known as Purusha. The analogy might not be useful, but it serves as a way to connect thought conceptually for me.
chimeric
chimera
1 a capitalized : a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail b : an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts 2 : an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially : an unrealizable dream <a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer — John Donne> 3 : an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution
(Merriam Webster)
the ‘experience’ of the digital becomes one of process, a performance (Groys, 2008: 84). As we have already implied, being qua data proceeds from its operations. When modulating some digital data into a display state and experiencing it as an image (say, in order to show a picture of your child to a friend on your phone), you can no more say that it is the same, or even a copy of the image you showed a different friend yesterday than you could say the D flat played by Martha Goldstein in her 1970 performance of Chopin’s “Etude Op.25 No. 8” was the same D flat that Hermann Scholtz played in his 1879 performance of the same work, let alone the same D flat that Abel Tesfaye sang in The Weeknd’s 2011 performance of their song “The Knowing”.
This example of display state, I really get the sense of the notion of individuation through the musical analogy, and the concept of process/performance is made clear. The idea of privileging process over product applies to the valuation of what is experienced rather than the means of production.
phenomenological
phenomenology
a philosophical movement that describes the formal structure of the objects of awareness and of awareness itself in abstraction from any claims concerning existence
(Merriam Webster)
the grand assertion
everything is digital, and digital is everything
ontology
a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being
They are directed at displacing ‘the human’ from the centre of action, multiplying the sites and forces and functions that are to be analysed, at the same time that these factors are simultaneously treated as part of a sole and single natural world.
Treating things that are considered unnatural (site, forces, functions) and treating as natural.
proprioception
from Latin proprius, meaning "one's own", "individual," and capio, capere, to take or grasp, is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement.
(wiki)
corporeal
having a body
Hayles does not go quite as far as Bernard Stiegler, who repurposes the Epimetheus myth in order to show that humans have no essence separable from the technologies they require for life (Stiegler, 1998). Stiegler complicates temporality even further by asserting that technics, “far from being merely in time, properly constitutes time” (1998: 27). The logical conclusion of this train of thought is that ‘the human’ emerges as a post-facto image from particular technological situations (and not from all of them!), a conclusion that Hayles’s version of Simondon’s and others’ approaches does acknowledge without fully accepting, by insisting on the adaptive approach of epigenetic evolution (Hayles, 2012: 90). Francisco Varela’s work with organic living systems, abstracted to apply to the assemblages formed between technical systems and organic beings, also strongly informs this mode of thought. Varela talks of “embodied cognitive structures” and models of understanding based on “microworlds and microidentities,” as well as of knowledge that is “built from small domains” (Varela, 1992: 334). He defines embodied cognition as the experience of a body with sensorimotor capacities that are “themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological and cultural context” (Varela, 1992: 329). Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s concept of a body is available to apply this theory to digital environments, and many contemporary theorists of new media and affect have done just that, including Anna Munster, Claire Colebrook and especially Luicana Parisi in her book Abstract Sex. Parisi uses such readings to move beyond the dichotomy of embodiment and disembodiment. She also calls on Donna Haraway’s famous explication of the cyborg, reminding us of the need to revisit Haraway’s thesis in the light of the contemporary era of cyborgian digital networks (Parisi, 2004: 135).
The idea of a human "essence" being inseparable from technology is especially telling of our current moment, given that Stiegler wrote his comment in 1998, before the onset of constant digital bombardment. I think in terms of investigating these notions, a prolonged engagement with these ideas and a consideration of Haraway would be instrumental in further developing a critique for the capstone project.
ather he understands mediation purely as the process of interactive communication between the two structures, a process which always amplifies (Simondon, 1992: 304).
This idea of mediation is interesting, given our interest in rhetoric and the digital. Considering modulation as amplifying, interactive communication between two structures, we could see rhetoric in our current moment as informed by "medium" as with Lane's work on subversion in social media. That particular type of rhetorical move is informed and enabled by the available means, i.e., Twitter and cross-platform hashtagging. The cross-platform feature is an example of how one feature in one mode is being amplified across media.
“modulation is molding in a continuous and perpetually variable manner” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 562 n92).
Modulation in this case would be resistant to singularity of meaning, which would fall in line with Derridean ambiguity.
it is rather to be given a new access to being itself, and one which must thereafter guide our thinking of natural processes more generally.
Do we exist in the digital?
Unlike broadcast television, multiplatform television can be understood as a rhizomatic assemblage as it contains no centre of significance and cannot be unified into a whole. Multiplatform television consists of a number of different media sites, services and devices where viewers can access the programmes of their choice at any time.
Is this the direction that rhetoric is going in?
The concept of reciprocal determination is important for challenging the centrality of broadcast television and the idea of television and television culture as something with a fixed and stable structure based on fixed roles, binaries and hierarchies such as production/consumption, producer/audience, industry/consumer and even technologies/text.
I think this concept can very well be applied to rhetoric, i.e. writing/speaking
This approach means that the actual is always informed and influenced by the virtual and that, while the virtual may have an infinite number of possibilities, only some are actualised. It also implies that ‘the determination of every actual being by the virtual past in its entirety remains contingent for Deleuze:
Going back to agency and the confusing divide between digital and real. We don't consider the digital to be real, but what happens in the digital realm is produced by humans
constantly being reconfigured according to the introduction of new elements and components. This essay turns to assemblage theory because it specifically focuses on open and dynamic systems.
Much like rhetoric is constantly evolving
challenges a linear determination based on a cause and effect logic,
It's interesting that this way of thinking is present in TV and in writing. We have finally started to move away from a linear writing process, and it seems as though the same thought process is present in media production.
‘[T]hey have helped to mask some of the medium’s fundamental transformations, and they have continued to shape key assumptions about television’s interactions with its audiences,
I agree with this; my parents and grandparents have yet to embrace the interactivity of television. My grandparents have a basic cable subscription and they refuse to upgrade because the newer technology threatens to disrupt what they know about television.
These changes have transformed television from a single platform medium into an interactive multiplatform medium that encourages viewer (if this term is still appropriate) participation
perhaps "viewer" needs to be changed to "user"
Targeted advertising clearly plays on desires in a harmful manner, taking advantage of a user's specific set of insecurities for the sake of capital gain.
I know I personally get annoyed at excessive advertising, sometimes closing a site altogether if it is not imperative I stay on. Surely others have this response as well, right?
I've heard this called Six Degrees of Wikipedia.
This text makes use of terms like "pressure," "challenge," and "provoke" to refer to the effect of hyperlinks on a user. These terms don't seem to support their usage in the ways they are most commonly employed.
This is parallel to Plato's criticism in Phaedrus: new technology is no replacement for more traditional modes of discourse and any attempts to use it as such will inevitably fall short. However, use of technology within its own unique context has great potential for rhetorical efficacy.
Control over the user is maintained via the illusion of choice. Not a far cry from most other modern controlling circumstances.
Is the structuring of television in such a way ethical? The passive reception on behalf of the viewer is hardly engaging in such a way that television would maintain this grip on people's free time without this sort of addicting programming. Add in the feedback loop that occurs when similar practices are adopted by the instantly adjusting internet, and the ethics become even murkier.
"Rhetoric of the possible" = kairos. This embodies rhetoric in all its most effective forms. The phrasing identifies rhetoric as an constantly adjusting art, guided by the moment at which it emerges. In this way, rhetoric is choice for both rhetor and recipient, or in the case of this digital architecture of choice, a series of choices which have potential to carry a single user across the gestalt rhetorical landscape of a series of entirely unrelated creators.
Presenting too many choices at once leaves the user feeling overwhelmed and unlikely to proceed. However, given the vast nature of the Internet, following one option inevitably leads to another with many divergent paths, all of which leading to a virtually infinite array of options presented in a narrow, funneling fashion. A user may find themself at an end point very far removed from their starting point in a way not at all unlike natural human thought.
"Practical" application of rhetoric in a modern sense is often some sort of capitalist application.
the first being a dystopia and the second a promise that as yet no one knows how to fulfill.
Evolved version of earlier thesis. This is the application of his earlier discussion of "inevitable direction" of progress--the predetermined route. Rather than mitigating our inevitable demise, we calls for movement with admission of not knowing.
But, if I dare say so, the fact of the mat-ter is that matters of fact are in great risk of disappearing, like so many other endangered species
The science of politics replaced by the politics of science.
Earth as a quasi-organism
Earth: object, assembly, or organism?
cosmos
Seems to be projecting our issues (rightly) beyond this planet.
ommensals
com·men·sal·ism kəˈmensəˌlizəm/ noun Biology noun: commensalism
an association between two organisms in which one benefits and the other derives neither benefit nor harm.
(Google)
This is precisely the point where compositionism wishes to take over: what is the successor of nature?
Latour is concerned with this idea of succession. This seems to be one difference between our guidelines for critical thinking and his call for compositionism. While we can write about a writer, and content, and how something is written, we are not asked to succeed the authors ideas with any of our own. Or rather, we aren't explicitly asked too--though that may be the implicit call of our classes themselves: go build.
Progress is fully reversible and that it is impossible to trust in the clear-sightedness of anyone—especially academics.
We collectively seem to be able to edit our current narrative. This pushes back against the idea of permanence in digital culture. Because we don't have a figurative "undo" button, we can cite our mistakes instead of hiding from them.
iconoclash
"Clash" implies that there is something going up against the idea in question rather than trying to destroy it altogether.
With critique, you may debunk, reveal, unveil, but only as long as you establish, through this process of creative destruction, a privileged access to the world of reality behind the veils of appearances
Critique seems to believe in access to the "inevitable direction of progress."
stop going further in the same way as before toward the future.
I hear echos from my Literacy Studies courses; current-traditional ideology, anyone?
The thirst for the Common World is what there is of communism in compositionism, with this small but crucial difference: that it has to be slowly composed instead of being taken for granted and imposed on all.
So, by a deconstruction of the modern and a call for the inclusion paradoxes and the affirmation of thing-power, Latour argues against the corrosive thread of the logic that human agency exists in a mental vacuum of thought, that rather, the universe/pluriverse is interdependent, in the face of the apocalypse.
eikos
Greek word which meant 'probable' as in the modern sense of probablility: "To be expected with some degree of certainty."
a metanoia of sorts
change in one's way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion.
(google)
The increase of disputability—and the amazing extension of scientific and technical controversies—while somewhat terrifying at first, is also the best path to finally taking seriously the political task of establishing the continuity of all entities that make up the common world.
Disputability—ambivalence—sounds again like a synonym for paraconsistency, which has the capacity for holding paradoxes within a logical framework.
the notion of matter is too political, too anthropomorphic, too narrowly historical, too ethnocentric, too gendered, to be able to define the stuff out of which the poor human race, expelled from Modernism, has to build its abode. We need to have a much more material, much more mundane, much more immanent, much more realistic, much more embodied definition of the material world if we wish to compose a common world.
So then the argument is for remediating what constitutes the materiality of the universe.
They simply transform this discrepancy (which would make their worldview untenable) into a radical divide between human subjects and nonhuman objects.
This is a simple summary of the modernist rationalist which locates agency only within human actants.
concatenations
a series of interconnected things or events.
(google)
This conceit has the strange result of composing the world out of long concatenations of cause and effect where (this is what is so odd) nothing is supposed to happen, except, probably at the beginning—but since there is no God in these staunchly secular accounts, there is not even a beginning. . . . The disappearance of agency in the so-called “materialist world view” is a stunning invention, especially since it is contradicted every step of the way by the odd resistance of reality: every consequence adds slightly to a cause. Thus, it has to have some sort of agency. There is a supple-ment, a gap between the two. If not, there would be no possible way of discriminating causes from consequences. This is true in particle physics as well as in chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, or sociology. Thus, although in practice all agencies have to be distributed at each step of the whole concatenation, in theory nothing goes on but the strict and unaltered transportation of a cause.27 To use my technical language, although every state of affairs deploys associations of media-tors, everything is supposed to happen as if only chains of purely passive intermediaries were to unfold.28 Paradoxically, the most stubborn realism, the most rational outlook is predicated on the most unrealistic, the most contradictory notion of an action without agency.
Here, he argues against the concept that things or non-human bodies exist without agency of some kind.
One of the principal causes of the scorn poured by the Moderns on the sixteenth century is that those poor archaic folks, who had the misfortune of living on the wrong side of the “epistemological break,” believed in a world animated by all sorts of entities and forces instead of believing, like any rational person, in an inanimatematter producing its effects only through the power of its causes.
Jane Bennett mentions the problematic concept of animism in her discussion of thing-power and thingness.
proliferation
rapid increase in numbers.
(google)
neologism
a newly coined word
the agreement that created the Bifurcation in the first place now lies in ruin and has to be entirely recomposed. This is why we seem to experience a sense of familiarity with the times before its invention and implementation.21
Here he's arguing for a repair or remediation of this Great Bifurcation between subjectivity and objectivity.
For we have simply conjoined the worst of politics and the worst of science, that is, the two traditional ways of producing indisputability. We have been here already
So we have a critique of the status quo in science and politics.
We compositionists want immanence and truth together. Or, to use my language: we want matters of concern, not only matters of fact. For a compositionist, nothing is beyond dispute. And yet, closure has to be achieved. But it is achieved only by the slow process of composition and compromise, not by the revelation of the world of beyond.
This is in line with Clemens and Nash as a form of inclusive theory.
es extensa
Res extensa is one of the three substances described by René Descartes in his Cartesian ontology (often referred to as "radical dualism"), alongside res cogitans and God. Translated from Latin, "res extensa" means "extended thing". Descartes often translated it as "corporeal substance".
via Google
The idea was that the more natural we became, the more rational we would be, and the easier the agreements between all reasonable human beings. (Remember the big bulldozers and warships of Avatar in their irreversible—in fact, fully reversible—advance to destroy the great tree of life?) This agreement now lies in ruins, but without having been su-perseded by another more realistic and especially more livable project. In this sense, we are still postmodern.
The initial thought is a simplistic linear concept, yet the linear outcome, as with the example of Avatar is that of ruin, followed by an absence of further development, so Latour locates us within the postmodern.
his was the time of the great political, religious, legal, and epistemological invention of matters of fact, embedded in a res extensa devoid of any meaning, except that of being the ultimate reality, made of fully silent entities that were yet able, through the mysterious intervention of Science (capital S) to “speak by themselves” (but without the mediation of science, small s, and scientists—also small s!).
This sounds like the ideology of dominant power structures, especially referring to his mention above of the silencing power of "matters of fact."
Nature is not a thing, a domain, a realm, an ontological territory. It is (or rather, it was during the short modern parenthesis) a way of organizing the division (what Alfred North Whitehead has called the Bifurcation)13 between appearances and reality, subjectivity and objectivity, history and immutability. A fully transcendent, yet a fully historical construct, a deeply religious way (but not in the truly religious sense of the word)14 of creating the difference of potential between what human souls were attached to and what was really out there.
He seems to connect the concept of nature to the idea of a framework of order.
Which is another way of saying that we don’t wish to have too much to do with the twentieth century: “Let the dead bury their dead.”
This reminds me of the comment one audience member offered Jane Bennett: are the hoarders actually in touch with the reality of death and decomposition as opposed to their inherent ability to hear the living call of material things? It's a subtle difference that I don't accept just yet, but this idea of reassembly made the thought of the hoarder connect with Latour.
But when there is nothing real to be seen behind this destroyed wall, critique suddenly looks like another call to nihilism. What is the use of poking holes in delusions, if nothing more true is revealed beneath? This is precisely what has happened to postmodernism, which can be defined as another form of modernism, fully equipped with the same iconoclastic tools as the moderns, but without the belief in a real world beyond. No wonder it had no other solution but to break itself to pieces, ending up debunking the debunkers. Critique was meaningful only as long as it was accompanied by the sturdy yet juvenile belief in a real world beyond. Once deprived of this naïve belief in transcendence, critique is no longer able to produce this difference of potential that had literally given it steam.
He argues that the absence of a (R)eality and (T)ruth for critique to reveal has rendered the concept of critique impotent and vulnerable to a deferral to nihilism.
iconoclasts
a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition. 2. a breaker or destroyer of images, especially those set up for religious veneration
(google)
veil of appearances
Here, Latour seems to be arguing against inherent (T)ruth, advocating for a reconsideration of what critique might offer.
compositionism takes up the task of searching for universality but without believing that this universality is already there, waiting to be unveiled and discovered. It is thus as far from relativism (in the papal sense of the word) as it is from universalism (in the modernist meaning of the world—more on this later). From universalism it takes up the task of building a common world; from relativism, the certainty that this common world has to be built from utterly heterogeneous parts that will never make a whole, but at best a fragile, revisable, and diverse composite material.
Here his description of the compositionist philosophy feels tentative, ambivalent and perhaps as the digital ontologists claim, paraconsistent.
Zeitgeist
the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.
a new search for hope on condition that what it means to have a body, a mind, and a world is completely redefined.
This is interesting in league with what Clemens and Nash offer on digital ontology. The notion of the body being remediated into a display state via the avatar is a compelling idea.
People typically view disability through the medical model, in which diagnosed conditions present obstacles to be cured or overcome. But according the social model, while many people may have all kinds of medical conditions, people are disabled by the lack of accessibility in our society.
Social lenses allow the exposure of systemic and societal failures and shortcomings as opposed to pathologizing individuals. A solely medical lens also gives an incomplete picture of size, gender, mental health, and any number of other social constructs.
The message should be that people with disabilities can set and achieve goals, not that thin equals beautiful.
Even a narrative which is entirely her own and in no way involves some sort of able-bodied savior has been co-opted by an ableist (not to mention fatphobic) agenda.
Why is Qdoba not accessible to disabled patrons in the first place?
Hero narratives operate in service of individualized short-term quick fixes over sustainable, agency-restoring, long-term systemic solutions.
Did Jones ask permission before objectifying this woman in his quest to praise Quarles?
Even if he did, it would still be invasive and rude.
I’d love to read a story about Lapkowicz and her social world or perhaps something on the significant challenges faced by people with intellectual disabilities as they transition out of high school and look for work or college.
A specific example of how journalists could add depth and purpose to stories about people with disabilities in a respectful way that centers the story on the people themselves.
They all feature people doing good things. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the content of these stories, of course, but the way they’re told conceals the real issues faced by the disability community. We need stories that illuminate instead.
This passage is very rhetorically effective. There is concession (acknowledging that the stories are not bad and that the people in them are indeed doing good things), critique (identifying that the primary issue with the narratives are the way they are told), and specific proposal for change (the solution here is to tell the stories in ways that address "the real issues faced by the disability community").
so her work continues.
An advantage of embodied, disembodied speech. Modern technologies of writing, recording, and dissemination allow Stella Young to speak directly to me (or anyone else), even posthumously, without removing the context or impact of her words, meaning that she continues to (and will continue to) positively affect change.
inspiration porn sometimes shames the viewer by showing a disabled person overcoming basic obstacles, implying that anyone less disabled has no excuse.
This sort of assumption, that a person without disabilities should be able to do whatever a person with disabilities can do, is rooted in ableism and is the sort of overgeneralization that inherently diminishes the accomplishments of anyone with disabilities.
exploring the various ways that disabled people were used to make other folks think mostly of themselves.
Not only do people without disabilities shift the attention back onto themselves, but they don't even do so in productive ways. Many take in these stories and think about how they are not disabled instead of why they are not disabled, aligning their thought with the medical model of disability and not questioning further the origin of the challenges which many people with disabilities are faced with.
Perhaps Plato is right—storytelling is the foundation of rhetoric, and I am above all a storyteller.
Since this is still a draft,I do think that there are some places on the rubric that you'll need to revisit to fill in the gaps, like with your critical thinking definition and some of the points.
I think it's interesting how you talk about storytelling (orality) in this Platonic way. I think it's a good thing to end with this positive and strong identity you have cultivated as a storyteller.
Overall, it looks like you're on the right track with the CRE. Perhaps in your development of the essay, you could enhance the modality and the navigation to your artifacts with image/video/audio and hyperlinks.
My goals have evolved from just get in, get the most practical knowledge, and get out to more thoughtful academic pursuits
This sentence is a little confusing because of the colloquial structure. Reading it aloud, I totally get what you're saying, but I think that the tone/voice here is a departure from the tone you employ elsewhere in your essay that's more clear and academic.
As a rhetor I am obligated to create a new, more vibrant, and sustainable truth for the emerging New South.
I think it's great that you acknowledge your own unconscious bias as a writer and your subsequent awareness and identification of that. This really shows growth and agency.
I began to think in a much broader sense about communication and how unconventional platforms could ultimately provide a voice for traditionally marginalized groups, e.g. women, the elderly, African Americans, and animals.
This is a really great statement!
I used expository writing, Google timeline application, and virtual modeling
Perhaps you could elaborate on how those modes served your purpose in constructing that history.
The CTW assignment exploring the possible causes of Alexander the Great’s death reflected Plato’s theory that texts can indeed be misleading when the authors are long dead and conclusive evidence no longer exists, if it ever did.
I think this sentence ties together an important connection between writing, meaning, and embodiment, but the ending confuses the focus a little bit.
divine inspiration
This reminds me of how we studied "the sublime" in Dr. Burmester's 3050 class.
Kenneth Burke’s
It's good that you're tying in a key rhet/comp figure as an influence on your evolving idea of rhetoric.
concept of rhetoric
Stacy, your concept here in the draft you’ve provided still needs development in order to satisfy the prompts. I noticed that you still haven’t made visible your 8 artifacts on your site—making connections to your work in this particular essay will thread together evidence of your learning. You might want to think about how your personal narrative aspects serve the focus of your portfolio, in terms of audience and purpose. I understand you’re working with a hybrid format. Maybe consider pointing out how your experience in the department is unique because of that hybridity and how elements from each concentration have helped you grow as a writer. In addition, I’d be sure to address the aspects of the rubric that are most pertinent to each concentration, but I think the big take away is giving the evidence of your learning, providing a narrative for your accomplishments.
I agree with Mercedes here about your graphic. It gives your portfolio a great contextual texture.
On the Web “the possible” that is conjured is often a possible self, one with a new pair of shoes, whiter teeth, faster Internet service, or a cheaper car insurance bill.
The intelligent, more knowledgeable and informed self.
"In the above examples, the Web’s rhetorical biases are expressed by the orientation of audiences toward logicized multitextual consumption. Web users are always inundated with a staggering number of “relevant” possibilities, a ubiquitous rhetoric of the possible that encourages them to expand and renegotiate their media experience (see Craig and Flood). These fulfilled possibilities cohere into the rhetorical flows by which users are caught in unexpected patterns of participation, engaging issues, researching products, and exploring topics that while not preordained have been offered to them through a digital rhetoric that is heavily biased toward keeping its users connected to the Web. As is perhaps most evident in the personalization of CNN.com, the defining innovations of Web 2.0 technology only exacerbate this phenomenon, generating what Mark Andrejevic calls a “digital enclosure”: a virtual space in which this rhetoric of the possible surrounds users with customized possibilities for participatory audiencing (iSpy 2–4)."
Semantics and logic. These are the two driving forces of the 'flow'. Logical transitions are appealing to a society that craves organization. the internet wouldn't be nearly as popular if related information to our original search wasn't readily available.
"Web rhetoric provides a portal to this textual manifold, asserting the possible and provoking an emergent media experience that overcomes the traditional bounds of sentence, paragraph, image, and (web)page. Thus the hyperlink is not merely a way to suggest “outside” sources—a way to “escape” the text at hand in favor of others—but is instead the rhetorical provocation by which one’s multitextual environment is constantly challenged and renegotiated."
The ever-growing appeal of multimodality in a digital space only aids in overcoming the traditional bounds of print media. Not only can a hyperlink divert attention, but also a sound or visual can entice a reader. This is surely another way in which our multitextual environment is challenge, for our environment may not even be text. This can only be accomplished in a digital interface.
"This seems self-evident enough, and yet for some reason the critical response to hypertext prose has always fixated on the dissociative power of the link” (111). There is nothing at all “random” about Web audiencing, Johnson insists: “What makes the online world so revolutionary is the fact that there are connections between each stop on a [W]eb itinerant’s journey. The links that join those various destinations are links of association, not randomness” (109; emphasis added). In the days of digital audiencing, strolling from one activity to the next is simply a new way to turn the page (see Barker 174)."
It seems obvious that the hypertext audiences are exposed to are manipulated to achieve a certain agenda. It is my understanding that this is how rhetoric has operated throughout history. This is rhetoric's main objective; to fulfill an agenda without the audience realizing that they are somehow being manipulated. This is not to say rhetoric is inherently bad, but it is a useful tool.
"Romanticizing the supposedly “linear” sequentiality of earlier media experiences and ignoring the central constraints of online HCI, these scholars posit chaos in the absence of the rhetor’s secure jurisdiction over the audience experience. However, the digital age’s constrained liberation of the audience requires that we become more sensitive to the ways in which digital texts,rather than enclosing users in a unified technological product, encourage them to construct a rhetorically informed, multitextual flow."
Non-linear acquisition of information is not, in my opinion, radical. While it has its own set of problems, it also avoids certain pitfalls that come with relying on particular source of content. no longer are audiences subjected to a singular perspective. Even though the 'flow' might be meticulously constructed, it can still be avoided.
"These insights into the digital audience, I argue, can be best appreciated if viewed within a framework of struggle between the newly “liberated” audience and the procedural constraints of the Web. In this section of the article, I will explore the importance of this struggle, focusing especially on how Web texts productively constrain users’ “audiencing,” or the activities through which they become active participants in their media experience (Fiske, “Audiencing”). These constraints challenge the popular view that Web texts have radically decentralized our experience of textuality in the digital age."
I'm not sure that I completely understand, but debunking the idea that web users are randomly bouncing through content can be understood in terms of how rhetors preemptively construct a 'flow' to systematically guide the audience down a preconceived path. But there is no end to the path on the internet. Where then is the final conclusion drawn?
"For Williams flow unifies and organizes discrete yet related textual units into a coherent sequence. Commercials, for example, are integrated into television shows in such a way that they appear not to interrupt them but to coalesce with them in a planned “flow”—similar settings, moods, actors, and products will appear during shows and their commercials, easing the transition between the different elements viewed by an audience. This sequential flow therefore overrides the individual unit—that is, the single show—as the organizational scheme of broadcast television. The compelling flow between a show, its commercials, and the programs that precede and follow it thus comprises the palpable unit of broadcast television."
This brings to mind the various ways that people today are actively avoiding the 'mindless consumer' behavior. Cookies can be blocked (whether or not the information acquired from online purchases can be prevented entirely is another conversation). Television commercials can now be fast-forwarded through. The bombardment of advertising is having an inverse effect on the general public precisely because it interrupts the flow of what people want to consume. With the internet, people can fine-tune their personal flow and exhibit some agency.