I don't think it means what you think it means. The interesting thing about civility, even in its staid dictionary definition, is that there is this seemingly narrow crack that has become a gulf in American politics. One definition has to do with maintaining civil order and the other is the more familiar one having... Continue Reading →
ambient cybernetics of the noise floor
Sometimes you come across a term commonly used in other professions and it just strikes you as thought-provoking... or at least that happens to me, and it happened recently with "noise floor." Maybe that's a term you've heard many times before (if you're an engineer or work with sound or maybe as an audiophile). If... Continue Reading →
the ends of digital rhetoric
Two personal data points: a meandering FB thread about the future of the Computers and Writing conference; another conference conversation over the implications of asserting that "these days" everything is digital rhetoric. It's a related observation, taken one step further, that leads Casey Boyle, Steph Ceraso, and James J. Brown Jr. to conclude in a... Continue Reading →
collapse porn: MLA edition
So two articles, one from MLA's Profession helpfully titled "The Sky is Falling" and another in The Atlantic that suggests "Here's How Higher Education Dies," perhaps from some kind of sky impact. Put together one might wonder if the MLA and its disciplines might manage to hold on long enough to die with the rest of higher education. This... Continue Reading →
podcasting: basic rhetorical questions
As you may have seen, I posted a podcast yesterday. I think I am finding starting up a podcast to be similar in its rhetorical challenges to starting this blog many a year ago. Back then I was asking myself some basic rhetorical questions about audience, genre, and purpose. These are all one question in... Continue Reading →
Ep 101: Siri’s Voice
This is my first attempt at this, so I'd love your feedback. And here's a link I mention in the podcast: Dennis Klatt's History of Speech Synthesis.
distributed deliberation #rsa50
In the wake of 2016 US presidential election, many questions were raised about the role of Facebook in disseminating fake news. Mark Zuckerberg’s response, posted to Facebook, points to the challenge fake news presents. Identifying the “truth” is complicated. While some hoaxes can be completely debunked, a greater amount of content, including from mainstream sources,... Continue Reading →
Blackboard and the arse end of the internet
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 →
