There's no doubt there is no dearth of cesspools on the web, and I wouldn't want to get into a debate about which is the worst. But Blackboard is it's own special circle of internet hell. As I've mentioned a few times here, after ending my stint as WPA, I'm back to teaching a regular... Continue Reading →
A different direction for asking why you heard what you did
So the basic story of the recent "Laurel or Yanny" story, as near as I can figure, is this. You're listening to a degraded digital recording of a voice that has distorted some of the low frequency sounds a human voice makes. So depending on a number of factors--some physiological, some psychological, some technological (e.g.... Continue Reading →
the late age of late ages
It's undeniably a quizzical situation. For the middle-aged rhetorician it's the comically late age of the humanities/English Studies and the tragically late age of humans (cf. climate change) in the midst of a still spry rhetorical universe that will go on without us. I can only imagine a generation of mid-century factory workers punching clocks... Continue Reading →
when AIs start vlogging
Right now I have two scholarly/professional interests, and I'm wondering how they intersect. On a general thematic level they appear to share a lot as they are both about digital technologies and communication/rhetoric. However, they also represent two very different segments of digital culture. I've been writing/speaking about both recently on this blog. The first... Continue Reading →
30 years on…
30 years ago, I was an undergrad and just starting a job working for a start-up, family business in the nascent IBM PC clone market. We assembled computers and sold them on to retails. We distributed hard drives and other components. We consulted with small businesses to provide them with IT solutions for point-of-sale, inventory... Continue Reading →
what is digital professional communication? (the video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz2aw927CHc Having asked students in my classes to experiment with video, I took on the task myself to make a video where I think about this question and the course I'm teaching in the fall. At this point I could offer various caveats regarding first attempts and such but to be honest I had quite... Continue Reading →
what makes professional digital communication interesting?
First, a tangent. Over the last week I've been part of a listserv conversation that reprises the now familiar question about how English Studies majors should change (or not). As I noted there, this has become a familiar genre of academic clickbait, like this recent buffoonery from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Among other things I pointed... Continue Reading →
The empty space of the academic presentation
So there's a fairly good chance you know more about Casey Neistat that I do. He's something of a YouTube sensation with over 9 million subscribers. He also had an HBO series (I guess you'd call it). In my "copious spare time," I've been hunting around, trying to catch up on the world of digital... Continue Reading →
On the importance of deep mixture density networks and speech synthesis for composition studies
Eh? What's that? I'm talking about AI approaches to the synthesis of speech on your smartphone and related devices. I.e., how does Siri figure out how to pronounce the words its saying? OK. But what does that have to do with us? Another necessary detour around the aporias of disciplinary thought... This is really about... Continue Reading →
