Yesterday my grad class began its discussion of Liza Potts' Social Media in Disaster Response. It is an excellent and (sadly) timely book that examines how people work across a variety of social media platforms during periods of disaster. In particular, she looks at Hurricane Katrina, the London bombings in July 2005 and the Mumbai... Continue Reading →
the principle of illectracy?
Perhaps Ulmer has a more elegant puncept for this, but basically I'm thinking here about the analog of illiteracy within electracy. I.e.: literacy -----> electracyilliteracy -----> illectracy? For the first 25 years or so that we have discussed electracy, I don't think there was a pressing need to imagine the operation of illectracy. For one... Continue Reading →
media theory and the Video Assistant Referee (VAR)
For the American sports fan, the instant replay is a familiar feature of our viewing experience. The use of replays in the NFL actually goes back to 1986 and has been steadily employed for 20 years. I think it's about the same for the NBA and even MLB has used it for a decade to... Continue Reading →
pharmakon poisoning in the electrate collective experiment
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436105 Without going into too much depth about it, I write ~30K words in May and June. It wasn't fun. No one told you writing was fun, right? I mean, generally speaking we don't get paid for doing things that are fun. Or as Julius Erving once said ‘Being a professional is doing the things... Continue Reading →
English Studies in the post-digital world
Though there are some ongoing conversations about the notion of a post-digital world (including Justin Hodgson's Post Digital Rhetoric and the New Aesthetic and Mike Flatt's discussion of post-digital poetics), I'm starting here with the mildly disturbing corporate speak of Accenture on how to be competitive in the post-digital world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=173&v=dpaw_ZAHZ-Q Accenture identifies five elements... Continue Reading →
hell is other people (on screens)
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 →
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 →
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 →
