Final Rhetoric Project-Edited

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzsFl1M5d9-ZSlAwWkRKWnZJVFE/edit?usp=sharing

It Was All A Dream..

Maybe a better version of this song could go... It was all a game.. I mean is that not where we're headed?  Sociologists are hard at work finding why people like playing games so much more than they like work, or reality for that matter. McGonigal showed that one of the reasons was that gaming was tied to a sense of urgent optimism. When we play games we can't help but feel that we'll win in the end, that there will be some prize at the end of the story, and that all this risk and time will have some sort of reward at the finale. Other emotions that she and others have found tied to games are: tight social fabrics, blissful productivity, epic meaning, and total empowerment. 

Being a little behind, I'm still feeling the effects of the latest TEDTalks, most notably Sir Ken Robinson's. One of the things he said struck me. It was a quote by another philospher but it goes like this, "There are two types of people in the world. Those who divide the world into types and those who do not." Now this was a joke in his larger argument, but it is interesting  if we apply it to gaming. If we do divide the world into types of people, there are people that are enduring, and those that are enjoying. For the gamer, it would be enjoyment (gaming) and enduring (reality). Their time is split between a boring reality, and an engaging alternate universe. Sir Ken Robinson brought the idea that we are born with our passions. Schools should act as the choosing ground, creating a space where a person can find their passion, which seems to be inherent in all of us. 

The gaming theory that we looked at before seems to show differently. There is not an inherent passion that makes us jump out of bed, but rather the emotions tied with that passion. So, anyone can find this joy in life if they know how to trigger those emotions. And again, these emotions are a tight social fabric, blissful productivity, epic meaning, total empowerment, and urgent optimism. All these emotions found and linked to gaming are also the emotions that are linked with a pressing passion. 

What this unfortunately seems to mean is that even the most boring job can be made awesome and empowering by embedding a game into it, and even a worker stuck in the pits of an accounting building can feel special and feel like their work has epic meaning. What matters is the reward. Right now, we can't see the reward, or we can, but we can't see how we can accomplish it. 

In the finale of her argument, McGonigal showed her conception of how to make reality into a game. If I remember correctly, the two examples they had been working on were: what to do when an apocalypse comes, and how to be a social innovator. As I looked over her examples, I kept thinking to myself, "there's no way I'm going to play those." And this is coming from a pretty avid gamer, who doesn't shy from eighteen-hour gaming binges fueled by Code Red. The reason why, which jumps out at me right away, is that someone wants me to learn something from this game, that there is an ulterior motive to my gaming. Right away that ulterior purpose shuts down my gaming tendencies. So, the problem, at least mine, is that my choice, to escape from reality, is not  being honored. 

Going back to the education model that Ken Robinson is proposing, we see a possible solution. These games could work if they were tied to the gamer's free will. We have to feel like we are making the choice to play it, and the trickery involved (us actually learning something or buying something) is the repercussion that we accept for the fun involved. 

This is a really interesting concept though and I'm just barely touching the surface right now..

Trying to stand on hot lava..

In a perfect world it would be easy to note the lines of demarcation separating then from now. Back to reality though, and we find that the past elements that shaped yesterday are merging and bouncing off and back with the elements of today, creating weird combinations of rhetoric and reality that are hard to acknowledge. The three essays we examined this class show  the reality of today (even though Jamieson's seems to be a little dated).

In Jamieson's article she points towards a changing trend in media where the feminine style is becoming higher valued over the male counterpart. She writes, "the intimate medium of television requires that those who speak comfortably through it project a sense of private self, unself-consciously self-disclose, and engage the audience in completing messages..." (805).

Where once we valued combative arguments, the distancing of emotions, and the strong, silent type, now we value expression, indicating emotion, harmonizing tendencies, and as Thompson writes, "the prolific, the outgoing, and the shameless." Thompson points how CEOs, a typical manly figure, surrounded in secrecy and hierarchy, is now being brought down to the people. We are turning into a social society and secrecy is no longer valued. We want these titans of industry to express their emotions, say how their business works, ask for input, and communicate with us, the little guys.

We see that Jamieson's analysis was spot on, even though she was writing back in the 80's, when Reagan was president. She focused solely on television, but with the rise of the internet there is a much greater influence on style than she could have imagined. A word that she didn't mention, but has resulted as an offshoot of this trend towards feminine rhetoric, is transparency.

We want to know everything about the company we work for, the boss we are under, the product we are buying, and even the president of our country. Obama is  the most prolific twitter president we have seen thus far. One of the reasons for his popularity is his embrace of social media and apparent transparency. As Thompson might say he is a "President 2.0." Now this isn't to say that he is the same person behind closed doors, but this series of closed doors is becoming smaller and smaller until we are soon left with only one room, in which only the most essential secrets will be kept.

It is interesting to see how the public image has shifted away from the strong, independent leader to one that is social, communicative, cooperative, and engaging. In a sense it is a shift from manly rhetoric to woman rhetoric, in the public domain. This might be just for the people, but Thompson would seem to push that soon all things private will also be transformed into this style of rhetoric.

At the same time as this discourse is going on, we have Wysocki, who pushes against this strain of socialness and culture deciding what is right and wrong, beautiful or ugly, important or not. To do this she examines and argues against Kant's theory of reality. She boils him down to saying, " (he) labels as necessary--our bodily sensations--as being social before we can ever experience them" (171). To explain this it is necessary to remember that Kant believed that our sensations were bound by our concepts of them. We can't think on our sensations without these preconceived notions of language, constructs, and social conventions. Therefore when we say that something is beautiful, it is not the beauty itself we admire, but the form of that beauty.

This form is constructed socially and the ideal of a nation changes as the value changes. Wysocki points to the changing trend in art, mainly the focus of beauty, to illustrate this point. But for us, this idea of form is important because the ideal style of rhetor that we created was, and is, defined by the times we live in and the technology available. It is not reality itself, nor is it a trend towards universality. It is a form that we have accepted in this era, and it too will probably pass (eventually).

One thing that Wysocki said that helps me to embrace the openness in rhetoric is, "we use the expected social constructions of form just enough to hold onto what audiences expect, but where we can then also make visible the particularities of our own lives and experience and hence make visible the limitations of the forms we have been asked to grow into..." (172).

Collaboration and Creativity

The two articles we looked at this week bring an interesting contrast into light with the relationship of postmodernism and creativity. With the IP law we see companies and writers trying to commodify the internet and make the reproduction of copyrighted material impossible without monetary gain. On the other end we see the emergence of wikis. Wikis stress the value of collaboration and anyone is allowed to write and participate in the wiki. How these two internet phenoms contrast is important, showing the devolution of "individual" creativity and the emergence of collaborative creativity.

Johnson says that, "the decline of fair use rights is firmly linked to a postmodern turn in intellectual property law- for the rise of postmodernism in general is tied to the loss of original context..." (203). I haven't felt the decline of fair use rights personally, enveloped in the bubble of MSU's database system, but it seems that another point he states later is of the utmost importance in regards to fair use. He says, "...textual content  has  become commodified, put into motion in the capitalist system, forced to earn its keep by moving incessantly" (203). Johnson seems to regard this as a negative result, harming future generations by what he sees as "the rich getting richer" and "the poor getting poorer." I think however that this constant movement is imperative to the future of writing.

To see the future of writing I think we have to look to the wikis and the collaboration that occurs online in places like forums, Wikipedia, and social media websites. Here is one example of collaboration.


One simple mistake can be creatively modified by another person and what was once a mistake turns into a funny dialogue that thousands of people can read, contribute, and comment on. What is fascinating to me is that Johnson does not mention, or seems to disregard the notion, that creativity can be collaborative. He seems to separate facts/collaboration from creativity/individual.

So, while the fair use rights might be tightening and individual finished works are being monetized and copyrighted, and even anthologies of texts are being copyrighted and restricted (another collaboration, but one that still seems to firmly remain in the textual sphere) there are wikis where creativity is not static and the process of creation is constantly fostered and necessary for its survival.

In the text, "History Now," the authors quote Grube and expand on his argument that, "the so far leading criterion of non linearity to determine hypertext should be taken back in favor of the criterion of interactivity" (173).

This constant interactivity is nonlinear and ongoing, but the authors separate it from the previous theory of non linearity and hypertext to show that the process of writing is just as important as the writing itself. I had some problems with this idea. Mainly, because the process of writing doesn't seem to be writing at all. In the same vein, we could say that making a sandwich is the same as eating a sandwich. There is the preparatory phase and then there is the actual act.

However, this process of writing is important to the structure of wikis in the fact that it does encourage constant revision and interaction due to the fact that it is a collaboration and people are free to change their views as time passes or history changes. This structure or space seems to break down the barrier that we have previously constructed between kairos and writing. It also seems to show that collaboration is a creative act, one that fosters change and connections- the heart of creativity.

Infographic

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzsFl1M5d9-ZRHpKMjlOMG1nU00/edit?usp=sharing

Rambo Stats

Critical Photo Essay

For my final essay I will talk about the effect the internet is having on the music industry. The rhetoric aspect will come from the different pioneering tools that aspiring artists are using to get recognized today. What interests me the most is the rise of music videos, the collaboration that occurs online, and the social media aspects involved.

My main area of research will be conducted on Youtube and music blogs, such as thissongissick and hypem. Through my research I hope to discover what makes a band appealing, besides the music, and how different bands are making a name for themselves on the internet.

For the composition of my critical photo essay I will be using videos, examples of web pages, and my voice for the main description of the content. There will also be text, used for support throughout the essay to guide the viewer on key points. This will all be done through a medium such as Powerpoint.

Intuitive and Unconscious Meaning

When a student writes a formal essay he or she is aware of the parameters defined by our teachers, our training, and the genre in which we write. This is something that was taught to us or something that we read and acquired through logical thinking. It is a conscious process, that builds a community of like people that all try to practice this process and work towards something.

Because writing is man-made, we also prescribed certain rules and restrictions that define what or what not it can be. A student writing a research paper is expected to behave a certain way, certain values are stressed such as logical process, building our ethos, and making our thesis clear.

Now, what happens when someone uses pictures in a research paper? Yes, it is frowned upon sometimes (most often). And yes, it has its functions. But what happens to the reader when they scan over the picture? Well, like McCandless said, "there is something comforting about pictures." Whether we like them or not, we can't help but scan over pictures and interpret them. The person can also be manipulated in certain ways to see a certain way. An example of this is with the WIRED magazine Fetish page in which the eye can't help but follow the pattern that the designers set. They created a never ending loop that keeps drawing our eyes back, around, and to the pictures they want to emphasize.

I think the main reason stiff English rhetoricians are resisting pictures is because there is so much unconscious activity taking place that they cannot define and can't place in a specific genre or grouping. It is much easier, I believe, to trick people with pictures than with words. Just think of illusions or optical tricks like this one..

With our eyesight we expect certain patterns, maybe that are even defined by our genetics. When we come into contrast with these pictures, our eyes might know that something is not possible, yet keeps trying to make a connection. This could be because our eyes are much more connected to a stable sense of reality than our brain, and when something threatens this reality, it still sticks to its guns.

Now, I think that one of the ways in which we can escape this sense of threat(coming from personal experience ha) and ignorance is to create genres for visuals. We make meaning out of things that we see, even more so than writing, yet previously this has all been done so quickly that we don't realize we made the connection, or it was done unconsciously. If we teach that certain visuals equals certain meanings, and show people in schools or in training the function of pictures and the allure of lines and shapes, people like myself will not feel like they are getting manipulated by pictures unconsciously. We can define the picture and through that definition and genre, make a logical connection that sets a parameter for it, and defines its function and what the picture is trying to accomplish.

A/V Video Commentary

When I made this video, one of the hardest parts was making it seem as life-like as possible. The lighting had to be just right and the transitions from scene to scene had to flow naturally. Basically, it had to be as close to the real thing as possible, as if a person was actually being instructed at the gym. With this in mind, the most conscious part I had to become aware of was the transition from scene to scene. In writing we seem to take it for granted that there is a natural progression of time, inside a specific scene, and the reader seems to recreate that continuous sense of time as if their eye and senses were jumping from person to person, or roving over a New York bar. But with video, there is a pressing demand to make the events flow in order and seam together to make a piece work. The blockier the piece is the less believable and life-like it seems, and you can't cut right from a scene to a person talking, they have to flow together and intermingle much more directly, that leap from scene to dialogue flowing much smoother. The seamless transition from one frame to another is what seemed to work for me, but there were other cases where my classmates used set scenes with an overlay of writing to convey a particular mood or setting, and these were individual blocks of time. I still have this idea that pictures/video should be as life-like as possible, recreating vision, but there are always people who distort this conception, and by so doing, make us rely on our other senses to interpret the work.

In other ways, my video was very similar to writing a short story. There has to be tension, breaks in the story, a mood imparted, characters, transition from scene to scene, description, and a choice to highlight on specific points rather than others.

Have we gone past hyper-speed and into plaid?

I was definitely intrigued in the article by Wolf the idea that computer simulation is at a level where it is trusted as reality. The example he gave that stuck with me was the cockpit, where pilots are basing their sight and lives on a mathematical representation of reality. We just assume that these representations are the real thing and place our absolute trust in mathematics and diagrams. Another example he gave was the courtroom scene, with the lawyer who presented material using a 3d analysis of the material, showing the jurors how the bullet path could have happened and chronologically placing events into a real-life scenario. It was then the judge's job to remind the jurors that this representation showed probabilities and did not represent the actual fact. The notion that he brings up is the idea that abstractions can become more real than reality itself. In Mishra's article we find the same concept mirrored with his example of the photograph and diagram of a mitochondrian. The diagram shows the three dimensional aspect with lines pointing to key functions of the mitochondrian, while the picture looks like a circle with diagonal blobs running through it. While this diagram may be a better representation for someone that is interested in biology and understanding different complex parts of the body, it can distract from the bigger picture of the story, and detract from new ideas being formed. For example, Mishra also gives us a diagram of the heart, one that we have all seen with the arteries and valves nicely colored, each part looking distinct and separate. He then says how med students will go into the body and be flabbergasted at how strange the heart looks, expecting reality to be similar to this basic diagram.

With this perspective I can understand how simulations and representations can be problematic. They are based off of past "truths," when in reality there are still no set truths that we can say are 100% for certain. We can say that statistically speaking, with the evidence given to us, from what we have seen up till now, that they are true, but we can't account for any future evidence that may disrupt these assumptions. The problem with this and diagrams/simulations representing reality are--what I can imagine being assumed to be true in the future when we are completely merged into computer simulation, maybe even living in a simulator ourselves. I'm not going to go all Matrix on you guys, but more like that Bruce Willis movie, Surrogates, in which we are living, working, playing in a simulated world with life-like avatars. It could definitely happen, why travel when a simulation is exactly the same? What better way to bridge the gap between time and space?

Anyways, if we live in this world where we are completely basing all our decisions off of models that were created, expected to be true, based on past conceptions of the world, then how can we discover new phenomena that is currently outside our current perception? (Ok, I'm going to go Matrix a little here).

I don't know there is something about the notion that Mishra presents and Wolf seemes to coincide with, that abstractions define reality better than reality itself that I just don't jive with. A present example of this is Photoshop, and color sharpening with pictures, to make them appear clearer and in the case of models, more beautiful.

Climb On!-Video Post

http://youtu.be/0JBKfRv-uC0

Climb on!

K.I.S.S. or to kiss?

It seems that a growing push in online media is towards simplicity. The paragraphs are shorter, white space is emphasized, and we hear advice such as, "speak as if you were talking to a 7th grader." If this is the wave of the future, I think that I, like other people in the writing program, have an ideal of writing that may be outdated and soon to become extinct.

In the McCloud essay, there are  certain things he brings to light that are so obviously apparent, yet so ingrained in our culture that we take it for granted. For example, the specific roles that words and pictures should have. We have the ingrained idea that pictures are more simplistic than writing and he shows us the escalation of the reader throughout maturity, going from pictures, to mixed, to pure text. If someone was to turn Ulysses, by James Joyce,  into a comic, it would be the simplistic version of the book, one maybe meant for teens or young adults. It would have lost its deeper meaning and interpretation. This may be in part due to the notion that artists have of trying to mirror the style of writing with a style of picture. The artist might/would probably try to copy the artistic integrity of Ulysses, with realistic pictures and vivid landscape, but by so doing, would create a dissonance between the two forms that contradicts itself and the appropriate message to convey. This is because, as McCloud illustrates, the two specialized forms of writing and illustration differ in purpose and are not interchangeable on their extremes.

However, if an artist would create a comic book out of Ulysses, with iconic representation and simplistic figures, it would be interesting to see how the enjoyment would go up or down with the book. By using a comic figure as a self imposed representation of ourselves, the main characters would be seen in a reflective frame and we would probably identify with them easier or not, depending on the artists perception of each character and how Tolstoy wanted them to be imagined. This is, of course, meeting on the base line of the triangle that McCloud shown, with the two "pure" forms as opposites. But what if we go higher and higher, into the abstract creations of each genre? What happens then?

I can't imagine to be honest. It is exciting for me think about and at the same time a little disheartening. It is one of the pleasures of that book to decipher the meaning from the confusing prose and lack of time or place. If pictures were inserted, I'd imagine that they would have to be abstract, in order to mirror the style of Ulysses. Yet, according to the pyramid, the words would have to be simplified, in order to match the level of pictures.

While I'm writing this I can't help but think of a Roman rhetor/rhetorician named Quintilian who argued that we evolved and became the dominant species specifically because we were able to speak, and that this was the original supreme function, our language. He then considers rhetoric to be the ultimate art, the art of speaking well. What this brings up for me, is something that has defined my writing and one of the reasons that I write. If writing and especially really good writing deals with the abstract, and with rhetoric-complex ideas, then how can pictures compliment this abstract writing and if it can't, what does this say about the future of our writing and the topics that we feel the need to discuss? If we have to supplement everything with pictures in order to be considered inside the status quo, then do we have to dumb down our subject material? Or, could abstact pictures complement complex writing and could  both work hand in hand?

I don't know, but it does seem that this is the future, and since I have no skills in drawing, it means I must either collaborate with an illustrator(?) or change the content of my subject in order to reach the mainstream.

According to the Script..

At this point in our academic development I think that we have a certain idea of the way articles and stories are created, am I right? There are certain genres and patterns that we are susceptible to unconsciously and consciously. We read a novel and we can usually recognize within a few pages the style of writing, what is a probable ending, and what we should focus on. For example, in any story by Lee Child, we can usually skim over the description of background. It sets a setting, but for the main part of the story it is not essential. Likewise, in articles we can also (if well versed in a genre's patterns) follow the argument that the author is pointing towards.

Previously, before reading this article, and even after (taking me a good night's sleep to digest the information), I didn't buy the idea of skimming as acceptable in the academic community. Upon further reflection I see that it is possible and like Sosnoski says, essential. Before, perhaps due to my inexperience, I needed the whole story to make sense of the argument. Yet, the more versed I become in a genre or theory, familiar with key terms and ideas, the easier it is for me to see the direction of an argument. For example in the article by Jakobs, I had a good sense of the direction of the paper from the abstract and first opening paragraphs. At that point, I was able to skim over the paper, focusing on the topics that interested me.

But, we have to remember that skimming is made possible and becomes much much easier when an author is aware of a reader's tendency to skim, looking for relevant information. We don't want to see huge long paragraphs with no end in sight for an entire page. We also don't want to see paragraph after paragraph with no headers, subheaders, or framework. I just recently read De Oratore, by Cicero, and one thing that greatly increased my comprehension was the use of headers in front of each section. I'm not sure if this was done by Cicero or the editors of the text, but it really helped me set the own framework for my mind, and in a sense getting ready for the paragraph and knowing what to expect. Likewise, Jakobs and Sosnoski (awesome last name), are aware of the reader's comprehension and how to focus attention with digital texts.

If we do want to create texts that a reader will read from beginning to end, it takes a lot more guiding and  logical means of persuasion. Of course there is the heart of the message, and also the writer's style, which affect the reader and may persuade them to keep reading, but generally I believe it is the framing, or the structure of the paper that needs to be first managed before a reader, with hundreds of articles at his disposal, will choose to pick up and read.

Meditating in the middle of traffic

The main ingredient I gathered from these two articles is that writing has evolved and in order to account for its evolution, it simultaneously needs to be explained. Much like a new genre or idea it  has its disciples who push the thought forward and they also reflect on its evolution to further evaluate its uniqueness and divergency. In the first essay, From Pencils to Pixels, the author first stresses the idea that writing was a new  technology at a point in time. In order for it to be accepted it had to approximate the spoken language. At the time, in Greece, the leading discourse was on the values of rhetoric and the philosophy to describe the universe through reason. There was also the arts and tragedies that were written down, as well as law documents and court proceedings (or so I'd assume). Writing mimicked these forms of speech and genres or divisions were created to account for the individual needs.

What this set up  was a divide between reason and emotion. If we follow the strains of each, we find rhetoric as the original root, but to a common observer now, they would seem mutually exclusive. Plato argued against writing, saying that only a wise, practiced rhetorician, writing on truth, could begin to make a statement in writing. Even a writing like this is suspect, because the speaker does not know the audience and cannot formulate his argument to bear the individual's person. Also the writing has no sense of kairos and can be observed in any state or time outside the rhetor's control. What Plato seemed to argue is that there is no universal truth and different truths corroborate to different souls and a rhetor must formulate his argument accordingly. What this might mean for the formation of writing is the necessity for an outside audience when writing. A rhetor might target a specific audience for his writing that would understand previous connections and functions that other rhetors have established, building up a lineage and inter-connectivity between the writings. If we look to today though we see this notion of interconnection has morphed into something that Plato would probably shake his head at (in awe or horror I'm not sure). The notion of audience has disappeared. We usually cannot (and don't want to) control the audience that reads what we write online. They can come from all walks of life, age group, ethnicity differences, political opinions...whatever.  To account for this there is an increasing need for validity as well as an evolution towards the merging of reason and emotion, more closely mimicking true speech and rhetoric than anything we have seen in history so far. With free reign for people to comment and post articles on some sites, we see the revolution of an argument, and begin to consider all sides of a debate, instead of just one. Specific audiences are not pandered to, and in accordance, the text and wording has to change to account for this. There is such thing as computerspeak, in which people write in a shorthand English to maximize how much they can say. When I first reflected on this trend, with such outlets like Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, and Facebook, it seemed that there was a serious devaluation of language and reason, but now I wonder if I am just stuck in the past. 

I still value the individual debate between one person. I get lost in large groups and somehow feel left behind. The concept of multitasking seems like a scar against meditation and reason. 

Yet, the language is changing with or without me and young people (and old) are able to formulate arguments from a better place, seeing all sides of the story, rather than my perspective, in accordance with an old, outdated rhetoric practice that slowly accumulates information, acting only in a specific lens, framing things into it, and throwing them out if the vernacular does not quite fit.  I think universal truth might forever escape me.. 

The second topic I found interesting in From Pencils to Pixels is the notion that in order for a writing to be valid it has to have a record of existence. This was pushed with the history of Samuel Morse refusing Bell's patent to a telephone because he was convinced that no one would want a telephone due to the fact that it could not be recorded. With ancient texts and even newer Renaissance pieces such as Shakespeare's works, there is also the question of validity. This is important to the reader, because to understand certain pieces we sometimes need to compare them with previous works done by the author, or know if the author was an expert or not, or just Joe Schmo, writing in his attic. We need to know if we can trust the author and whether or not we trust the ethos they have built.

In regards to today and the internet, Baron states that we are, "faced with the interesting task of reinventing appropriate ways to validate cybertext" (23). He goes on to state that it is hard nowadays to determine who is and who isn't an expert because of the variety of opinions and ideas that we can find if we step into a chatroom or newsgroup. 

Intro Video

Intro Video Part 1-3.-Man I'm getting old..