Rhetorical Actions

While I found the Kress and Jakobs readings to be fascinating, I'm not really compelled to write about them. I personally have always had issues with defining "genres" (usually music genres), and I'm not sure if Kress is calling for a new genre system or a simple recognition of various genres (and the freedom to combine or make new genres as needed). He says:

"My preferred solution is to accept, to begin with, that mixing is normal, in whatever domain, and at whatever level...mixed genres exist in written text, though they have been somewhat of a theoretical embarrassment. Mixed genres exist in multimodal, or mono-modal, non­verbal texts. The question is, what do we call generically mixed texts in writing?

In my approach, where genre does not name the text, but an aspect of the text’s organization (though I am happy to name the whole text after its dominant generic features -as in "interview”), there is no problem in saying that a text can be and in many cases will be genetically mixed."(52)

So...mixing genres is normal but it has been a theoretical embarrassment? I wish we had some examples of that (unless he's referring to the lab reports...).

Anyway, I don't think we should be so concerned with what to call new genres as much as we should know how to use them.

On to the UC Davis protests Doug posted about on our course page.

I was really impressed by the number of cameras (more like smartphones and even some iPads). In fact, there were probably more people holding cameras than not. But were the people holding cameras protestors? Apparently not, because one of them even got a smile from a police officer who politely directed him/her to an appropriate filming location. The people getting pepper sprayed were sitting on the ground linking arms—not filming. However, some filmers did participate in the chanting.

The protest might have been more moving if the people seemed more interested in participating than recording.

That's a strong statement. The protest was moving. It gave me goosebumps. I was shocked at the number of police officers that got paid to forcefully remove students from their own campus.

Really? There's not enough real crime going on? Not enough to do?

Also, I do think that recording events like this is essential in today's society—people like real-life evidence, and video is great for that. I also know that the recording devices probably came out in force at the same time as the police. But, you know, maybe 10 different angles would suffice.

And I'm confused as to how the police chose who to drag away from the protest. The people sitting up the straightest?

Anyway, I don't know much about the whole situation but it seems like peaceful protests are gaining power these days. There's something scary about large quantities of people posting up in one place watching you. And I think that's still the strongest rhetoric humans have.

Critical Analysis Draft

https://sites.google.com/site/newswithoutpaper/

I made a Google Site for my Critical Analysis assignment. It's not really done but it was quite time consuming so far (I'd say it took as much or more time as I would have spent on a 10 page paper, so there).

My research question is "How is the traditional institution of the newspaper responding to new technology trends?" (or something like that)

I want to do more with screen shots and analysis of how website design encourages certain actions of the reader, but I haven't done that yet....any comments/suggestions/feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Have a great Thanksgiving everybody!

Infographic Assignment

I'm pretty sure I spent way too much time on this and I'm not even sure if it's an infographic at this point...but here it is, I used Adobe InDesign CS2 to make it.

Who's in control?

The most disturbing thing about the myriad of texts for this week was Slavin's image of land being blown up to lay a cable that transmits algorithms from New York to Chicago "faster."

I have a rich uncle who got rich working for Goldman Sachs. He no longer works for them, but he has a giant mansion in Atlanta. I never really understood what he did, but I know it involved the stock market.

The stock market is where algorithms make money. There are no products or services, there's just exploitation. I guess the original money of the companies in the stock market probably came from products or services, but I don't think that has much to do with their value on the stock market. I don't understand it much.

When I was in high school, a graduate of the University of Alaska - Fairbanks came to talk in one of my classes. He was an economics major, or something like that. He had a success story for us—he had learned how to exploit the stock market and made a bunch of money, because he had gone to college to learn how to do so. So now, he didn't really have to worry about working (but I'm sure he had some job exploiting the stock market).

Is that a good example for the youth?

The U.S. government spent a bunch of money bailing out the banks a few years ago, another example of promoting making money from money and algorithms, not actually producing a product or helping people in any way. And it didn't help at all, we're just further in the hole.

Again, I don't know that much about this stuff—I'm just going to be a high school teacher. I must be pretty dumb because teachers barely make enough money to support themselves.

But that's all I really need to be happy, anyway.

Heffernan's article also relates to this idea of algorithms dictating peoples' lives. AOL apparently doesn't really want to offer a service, it just wants to figure out how to get the most advertising revenue and the prestige of a high rank on Google (again we see how Google rules the world). The sad thing is that people buy into it—advertisers and writers and the people who run AOL who thought it was a good idea.

The commodification of algorithms, the stock market, and Google rankings are just a few examples of how technology is getting a little too powerful for humans to keep under control. It's not the technology itself that is dangerous, it's the way people covet it. I honestly can't believe that laying a fiber-optic cable from NYC to Chicago to transmit algorithms for one company was even allowed to happen. That is the farthest thing from "sustainable" that I have ever heard of.

Technology is great, but how much of it is really necessary? How much of it is sustainable? Does producing a Kindle take more resources than producing the books people might buy instead of getting the electronic versions?

Do we really need all of this technology to be happy?

I know that I rely on technology every day and blah blah blah, I'm too young to remember life without technology. But I do think that we could be happier and more sustainable if we stepped back and tried to live more simply, without such heavy reliance on technology.

Do we control technology, or does technology control us?

NPR rocks.

I subscribe to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. I get the paper delivered to my house every day and enjoy the ritual of going outside, picking it up, separating the advertisements and checking out the headline stories (and the police reports and comics, obviously).

Conversely, I never jumped on the YouTube bandwagon. I guess I don't have the right sense of humor to find videos of cats or children or prank calls very funny. I don't like huddling around somebody's laptop and laughing at the appropriate moments. It's kind of awkward. The only YouTube video I'm an avid fan of is Rebecca Black's "Friday." It's a modern classic and I jam to it every Friday. Deal with it Heather.

But, I'm really enjoying the shift from reading articles to watching videos for this class. And when I realized that I thought, "Doug is modeling the course texts after the natural progression of rhetoric. How clever!" Doug is a pretty crafty guy who probably plans much of his classes around his personal amusement. Wouldn't it be funny to stage a class battle over whether there are or are not original ideas? Hilarity ensues. Wouldn't it be funny to make people complain in writing about how they hate to read? Wait. Writing means reading.

So at this point, we should all be recording video blogs instead of typing them.

But that would be so embarrassing to do in a coffee shop. Oh well.

So if I'm realizing that, like Anderson said, "what Gutenberg did for writing, online video can now do for face-to-face communication," I'm realizing that whether I like it or not, my old buddy the newspaper is going out of style.

If I was really hip, I wouldn't read the newspaper. I would get all of my news from obscure video-only news sites (future: YouTube News Edition?) and probably do my best to become functionally illiterate, because the written word is so 20th century. By the time I pick up the newspaper, it's already several hours out of date. What I read is yesterday's news. So when I go out into the world with my newspaper-knowledge and somebody says "Oh my goodness. Did you hear what happened this morning?" I have to blush and say "No...I don't have TV, nor did I turn my computer on this morning, and I didn't see anything crazy in the newspaper. What happened?"

I guess I should take after my mom and my sister and start listening to NPR in the mornings. NPR will always be hip in my book.

So Dash takes the YouTube age to the next level. "If you have the ability...what are you doing with it?"

Step it up, YouTube.

Not only YouTube, but the government. Twitter is another bandwagon I never jumped on, but that's just because I'm stupid and set in my ways and don't recognize innovation when I see it. The idea that people can communicate with the government through Twitter is just a fraction of the way the government could use technology to be more transparent and democratic. Which is probably why the government does not use social networking technology, not even YouTube...because that would be too transparent for their liking.

So let's just put it on the young people. The people who the government kind of ignores (how many politicians in D.C. are under 40 years old?) and whose vote politicians scoff at. The next generation must put these tools to use, Dash says. Sure thing, I'll do that.

But I still like to read the newspaper.