There's a NY Times article by Nellie Bowles doing the rounds with the titular observation that "Human Contact is Now a Luxury Good." It focuses on both old and young: the senior citizen with a virtual pet companion; the kids taught by apps on tablets and laptops. And it notes that the wealthy eschew screens... Continue Reading →
Becoming b-roll #4C19
Here's the text and videos used in my presentation in case you weren't inclined to drag yourself over here at 8am. Rhetoric and composition has been talking about video for decades—as a teaching tool, an object of study, and a medium of scholarly and student composing. More than 15 years ago, Dan Anderson was discussing... Continue Reading →
the “robot-ready” humanities
So I'm in the midst again of another well-intentioned effort to communicate the value of liberal arts (specifically English) majors and was introduced to this report, "Robot Ready: Human+Skills for the Future of Work," by the Strada Institute for the Future of Work and ESMI, which is a firm involved in economic modeling. I want... Continue Reading →
hold me closer tiny rhetorician
After all, who can resist an Elton John reference? Well, I'm in the midst of book revisions (and there was much rejoicing). I'm thinking back--and perhaps modifying--a notion I had a few years ago: minimal rhetoric. I'm thinking "tiny" rather than "minimal." Maybe both. My attraction to "tiny" is from the line in A Thousand Plateaus that has stuck... Continue Reading →
counting to zero: the hapless math of English Studies
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jonathon Kramnick offers an analysis of the contemporary academic job market in English in comparison with its state 20 years ago (coincidentally when I was first on the job market). This can be put in the context of statistics on the awarding of phds from the NSF. This chart shows... Continue Reading →
the broken fun of the humanities
The moral of this story is probably that some Chronicle of Higher Ed clickbait articles are too absurd to pass by, in this case, Timothy Aubry's "Should Studying Literature be Fun?" I find this to be such a bizarre question and ultimately I'm unsure what it has to do with the concerns of the article itself.... Continue Reading →
fake news and the distribution of critical thinking
Wired published an article a few days back based on this research from the journal Cognition. As the Wired article's title suggests, if you want to be resistant to fake news then "don't be lazy." Basically this particular study indicates that people who exhibit critical thinking skills are more resistant to fake news than those who do not, regardless of... Continue Reading →
the challenges of reading Latour
A couple of Latour-related articles have been going around lately, particularly this article in the NY Times and more recently this critical piece by Alex Galloway at least partly occasioned by the Times article. Galloway's rejection of Latour (and Deleuzian, new materialism in general, if one reads other works of his) comes down to the infelicity of this... Continue Reading →
why we can’t have nice things
It's that old saying but one that might cut in two directions. Yes, "we" can't have nice things because "you" are always ruining them with your irresponsible behavior, lack of class, etc. But possibly we also can't have nice things because we're always getting crap shoved in front of us. Or both. Facebook is case... Continue Reading →
