What digital language are you speaking?

In the reading Villanueva uses the term dialect with respect to the different variations of spanish spoken. The different dialects spoken separated people that were often grouped together as hispanic when in fact, the differences in dialect were so important that they often struggled either to understand each other or identify themselves as part of the same racial group. (Villeneuve, 40-41)

The term dialect, according to wikipedia, is "a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group...distinguished by it's vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation." While this term is meant to apply only to language, it can be applied to all forms of rhetoric in general. In the context of rhetoric, a dialect becomes the different uses, associations, meanings and connotations of various symbols (including language) characteristic of a particular group. Looking at the different dialects used in media can help us understand more about the authors intent and/or meaning.

Bibliography

Villanueva, Victor. "Spic in English!" Bootstraps: from an American Academic of Color. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993. 34-50. Print.

"Dialect." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 03 Nov. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/dialect.>

Quiz Questions

In the article Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games, digital dignity is when

a) a player feels capable of achieving a challenging or difficult goal

b) the ideologies of the hero match the ideologies of the intended audience

c) video game representations of other cultures breakdown negative stereotypes

d) a player feels a sense of pride in his culture when playing the game

Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games shows how games created from the Islamic point of view help players to view the world in a more culturally neutral tone.

Blog #9: Will someone please tell me what my race is!

I liked the site about Race the Power of an Illusion. I admit, that before reading it I thought there must be some genetic or biological basis for race. After all, I can identify who is black, asian, indian, or american indian. After completing the sorting people test and getting only a handful of people placed in the classification they put themselves in I did an experiment. I reloaded the sorting page and as fast as possible I moved people into categories without paying any attention to where I was putting them. I was going for random placement. When I viewed the results, I did about the same as when I tried to classify people based on their appearance.

It is insightful to realize that our appearances are just as likely to put us in one racial classification as another. However, this view of race still perpetuates one of the main problems about race: that you can be classified into specific racial groups. In this way the website has not gone past the idea of "menu-driven" races that Nakamura talks about (102).

However to the websites credit, when comparing skin traits the site demonstrates that lightness or darkness of skin color is evenly distributed between the people who classify themselves as different races. Since skin color is probably the most common trait used to identify race, this essentially destroys the concept that you can classify people into any single racial category and helps to go beyond the menu style of categorization.

The terms used in the discussion of race are so ingrained into society and the way we speak that elsewhere in the site they revert to this menu-driven idea of race. Under the race timeline looking at the year 1994 for example (other examples are available), they look at the different income levels of whites versus blacks. With the idea in mind that race has little to do with skin color, how can such a comparison be made? What they are really doing is comparing people who classify themselves as white or black. As constructionists, this makes it impossible to tell if the statistic is occurring because of race or if people are identifying themselves as that race because of the statistic. Don't people in a community tend to identify themselves as part of that community? If you live in a community that people classify as black, even if you are hispanic, would peer pressure cause you to classify yourself as black as well? Is peer pressure even required?

We now come to the title of the post. My sister married someone of hispanic decent, but he is just as white as I am. My brother married a women with dark skin, but she was raised in a "white" family and has no idea what nationality her birth parents are. As I look at the people around me I am beginning to wonder what race I am. I'm not entirely clear what nationality my ancestors are and since biology is not a factor it is entirely possible that I could be considered asian, african, or european.

I think the site is enlightening, but it often reverts to dropping people into racial buckets rather then allowing people to exists as part of many races. Many people, including Nakamura, contend that racial stereotypes (or cyber-types) can be eliminated. This is a utopian goal I believe we should strive for. Unfortunately, race is just one of the more recent ways in which humans are manifesting one aspect of our nature.

We are community creatures and we seek to participate in communities that will protect our interests. In order to unify the community we link our identities to the simplistic notions that bind the community together. We become "Recovering Alcoholics", "Jocks", "Black", "Intellectuals", "Republicans" or one of many others. As we take on these identities we begin to view others in terms of the communities they participate in; generally focusing on only one and ignoring the many others they are in. As we compete for scarce resources we pick out negative aspects of others communities as reasons why we should get the resources and they should not. History has born this pattern out using different criteria. Greeks used language, romans used their culture, Catholics used religion and in the future maybe we will use something similar to the digital divide. Weather you call it race, gender or some other trait, stereotypes are created as part of human nature. We must find a way to operate knowing these stereotypes exist rather then simply trying to eliminate them or we will usher in new discriminators as we push the old ones out.

Bibliography

California Newsreel. "RACE - The Power of an Illusion | PBS." Race - The Power of an Illusion. PBS. Web. 28 Oct. 2010.

Nakmura, Lisa. Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Blog #4: Home is where you hang your hat

In the article Webs as Pegs, David Bell argues that virtual communities are an improvement over the non-virtual type. I don't have time to review all of his supporting points so I will consider two of them. He offers support for this through several statements. He contends that virtual communities are more durable the non-virtual ones because they move with the individual rather then requiring people to break ties. He categorizes virtual community relationships as "pure" because people can take what they need or want from the community and then move on. That is the feature he is emphasizing when he calls them "peg communities."

I disagree with Bell's assessment of communities. It is true that when people move physical community ties are often broken and must be re-established in a new area. However, this does not mean that virtual communities are more durable. Statistically speaking most people end up living less then 25 miles away from where they were raised (I wish I had the source for that information, but I can't remember where I heard it so you'll have to look it up if you doubt me). This means that mobility is not as much of a limitation as he would argue.

One of his other main arguments is about the "pure relationship" virtual communities offer. He defines communities in terms of what you take away from them rather then what you give to them. In this respect people take away much more then they contribute to virtual communities. Even when adding content, most people are doing something for themselves rather then trying to "give back" This is evident in the number of online "flame" wars that take place in various communities. People are more interested in making themselves heard then sharing ideas.

I participate in both virtual and non-virtual communities. I go to work, I attend church and I am learning Taekwondo at the local dojo. Currently, I am a member of a enterprise computer support elist, and I also use Facebook. In addition, before I was married a couple of years ago, I participated in an online relationship site. What I find happens is that whenever something come up in non-virtual life the first thing to go is my involvement in virtual communities. Why is that? I think it is because instinctively we prioritize things happening in our immediate vicinity as higher priority. When the bodies needs are present, I must address them or risk harm but when I want to congratulate a friend, what does it hurt if I wait a day or even a week.

What is a community. Joseph Smith, the first prophet and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints (Mormons), made a statement when lecturing about faith. He said, "A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation" (Lectures on Faith, 69) Ignoring the obvious discussions this brings up about religion, I want to focus on what this says about community. Religion after all is just a very structured community. I think it is true that the benefit of community is not what you take from it but what you give to it.

Where communities become hybrid, they have advantages over traditional communities, but not because of their pegginess as David puts it but because of their lack of pegginess. It is commitment that drives us. When we lose that commitment, we also lose the protection and support that communities provide us.

Bibliography

Smith, Joseph. Lectures on Faith: Delivered to the School of the Prophets in Kirtland, Ohio, 1834-35. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1985. Print.

Bell, David, and Barbara M. Kennedy. The Cybercultures Reader. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.

I'd like to compare shoe websites for assignment #2.

Nike, Reebok, and Redwing

The reason why I'd like to compare these sites goes back to a class I took on world civilizations. When we were studying early homosapiens there was a great deal of attention given to the footwear that early people used. It gave a lot of insight into the problems he faced and how he chose to solve them. I would guess that if shoes said so much about people in that time then it likely says a lot about us today.

Blog #3: Yahoo, take me away.

Can you remember the commercial with the frustrated mother looking for relief from the stresses of daily life, and in the end she exlaims "Calgon, take me away." It became a best selling slogan. In earlier days you could call !Yahoo the digital (and masculine) version of Calgon. The current version of their site has strayed somewhat from that ideal.

In the beginning the web could be a frustrating tangle of hyperlinks. Yahoo!'s contribution to the net was to organize the madness and take you away from the confusion. It's early website was very simple. It used few graphics and was dominated by text. It organized information in an academic, open way in order to make you feel at home. In this way it became a comfortable place for surfersto return after their explorations around the web (Burnett and Marshall, 99). It may have been maintaining the appearance of openness, but it clearly had commercial ties. Burnett and Marshall said elsewhere in the book "The connotation of Yahoo! is that it is driven by the characterization of the Web as a form of media entertainment while making appropriate genuflections to the Web's role as information source." (97) While distinguishable in the older versions, as Yahoo! has developed these commercial ties have become more evident. Dynamic advertisements feature prominently. Where the old site featured primarily hyperlinks that would ultimately take you away from Yahoo! the current site provides links for various services and entertainment which keep you on yahoo.com. The theme in the past seemed to be simplistic. Following the advertising paradigm the new site uses eye catching icons and a variety of bold colors. In the center, the hyperlinks have been replaced with images and news articles offered in a way to allow you to get a glimpse at the top stories and then read those that interest you without ever using another service. The text that is present is displaye

d in different sizes and colors emphasizing those things that they want you to see. In a continued throwback to the good old days of the internet, they have preserved the search field at the top of the page. It is segmented from everything else though, and seems more like an afterthought.

If you find Yahoo!'s presentation unsatisfying, you can customize it by creating an account and choosing some of the links that will be displayed on the right side. However you can create your own custom page at my.yahoo.com which allows you to add and remove content (except for advertisements). Again, all of the information is provided by Yahoo! and there is never a need to go elsewhere.

I've added a screen shot of the my.yahoo.com website. It is interesting to note that almost none of the text is legible at the reduced image size, however you can still read the add and the Yahoo! logo.

Bibliography

Burnett, Robert, and P. David. Marshall. Web Theory an Introduction. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.

"My Yahoo!" Yahoo! Web. 22 Oct. 2010. .

Blog #8: Headline-The Web Eliminates Stereotypes!!

In astonishing news the web has successfully eliminated all racial, gender and age stereotypes. What this means is that there is no reason to fear discrimination when using a virtual identity. How did the web achieve this utopian goal? It did so by simply making all virtual identities white males of about the same age.

Hopefully the statement above is so obviously false that it was humorous. The digital age doesn't appear to be eliminating stereotypes. However, the term stereotype doesn't quite fit the world of virtual identities as argued in the article Cybertyping: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. In order to more appropriately approach this topic Lisa Nakamura coined the term cybertype (3). My understanding nCybertyping is the act of stereotyping online identities through the lens of virtual reality rather then the standards commonly known in non-virtual reality. Since virtual identities aren't directly connected to a physical entity, they aren't directly related to our bodies. This doesn't eliminate cultural bias, it just allows people to choose which team they are playing for. Identity tourism is the process of "switching teams" in order to see what it's like to use a different identity.

Street fighter 2 is essentially based on cyber types. Each avatar is muscular and well defined as all "fighters" should be. In addition to the fighter cybertype, each individual avatar overlays additional cybertypes. To focus on one specifically, let's look at Chun Li. She is the only women of all the street fighters and she follows many of the typical female stereo types. She wears makup, a dress and fixes her hair in buns with ribbons. If she loses a match, she is even shown crying as this picture shows. While she has skills that are useful against many of her opponents she seems to be portrayed as week.

Some amount of identity tourism takes place through the avatars of each character but I think the most powerful form of it is through the game as a whole. It is even organized in a tourist fashion. The player moves from one country to the other fighting different characters. At each arena, the back drop shows cyber types for each nationality. While many nationalities are represented, the United States has two players in the game. This allows the player to pretend to be a street fighter and move from one nation to the other and virtually experience each culture as a street fighter. In between stages the character is given a bonus round that allows him to do as much damage as possible to a luxury car.

This game gives evidence of the danger behind identity tourism in two ways. First, allowing people to try out violent acts gives rise to the possibility of transferring those acts to real life. Not everyone who plays a game like this will do that, but some probably do. The second danger is the misrepresentation of each culture. The nationalities are certainly more dynamic then what is shown in the arena, but the player may feel like they are experiencing the culture when they are only experiencing how the programmer cybertyped that culture. To the right is a picture of the character Guile's arena. It portrays americans in a very militaristic light. Hardly the opinion I'd like others to have of me.

Bibliographies

Nakamura, Lisa. Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. New York Routledge, 2002. Print

Okamoto, Yoshiki. Street Fighter 2. Capcom, 1992. Computer software

Blog #2: Digital Division by Zero

What is 1 ÷ 10? - If you think you know, think about an email signature I often use

There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

(For those that don't, 10 in binary is the number 2)

In simple terms this is an illustration of what the digital divide is. An individual's approach to problem solving is affected by their understanding of technology around them. When two people communicate, if one of them understands newer technologies they will view the problem differently. The one who understands binary would clearly see multiple solutions and may not know how to solve the problem due to insufficient information. The person that doesn't understand binary, would clearly see an immediate solution. Both answers are correct. The digital divide is characterized by this. People who understand and use digital communications technology solve problems in one way, and those that don't understand and use digital mediums use another. Both are correct from their perspective, however, our ideologies tell us that using these new technologies is good and those that don't use them are backwards or disadvantaged. Thus, a so called digital divide is created between those that use technology and those that don't.

Selfe and Selfe argue that the office metaphor used in computer interfaces today further expands the digital divide. They would argue that a new metaphor needs to be used. However I believe that the office metaphor is the most appropriate, and that all others would ultimately cause problems. In Politics of the Interface, Selfe and Selfe state

"The interface does not, for example, represent the world in terms of a kitchen counter top, a mechanic's workbench, or a fast-food restaurant -- each of which would constitute the virtual world in different terms according to the values and orientations of, respectively, women n the home, skilled laborers, or the rapidly increasing numbers of employees in the fast-food industry." (486-487)

In other words, the office metaphor excludes these classes of people because it doesn't represent the world as they see it. On the contrary, I think that the office metaphor is more inclusive then any other. Most homes have an office, and house wives often have a husband that works in an office. Skilled laborers may not spend their time in an office, but the business they work for uses an office and they understand the paradigms of the metaphor. Even in the lowliest fast food restaurant, there is an office. So while Selfe argues that the office metaphors used are "interested versions of reality" (Selfe and Selfe, 486) because all of these classes understand it, the office metaphore allows them to be included.

Any metaphor selected will exclude classes of individuals. What is critical is finding one that will include the greatest number of people. If we were to fashion the interface after, a kitchen for example, while it may appeal to house wives, it may exclude career women who avoid the kitchen at all costs. When first created reading, writting and math were limited to individuals of high rank and money because they used it to manage their wealth. Though the symbol we use today are rooted in their ideologies, we don't attach the world view that they attached to each symbol. Without their work, we would still be passing stories around campfires, but because everyone could understand management of wealth and resources, eventually these symbols spread to even relatively uneducated people.

Bibliography

Selfe, Cynthia L., and Richard J. Selfe. "The Politics of the Interface: Power and It's Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones." College Composition and Communication 45.4 (1994): 480-504. National Council of Teachers of English. Web. .

Lies, Statistics, and Peer-Reviewed Journals

Let's talk for a moment about the article by Nicholas DiGiuseppe and Bonnie Nardi that discusses character selection in world of warcraft(1). The discussion is interesting and the conclusions are theoretically intriguing, however the whole thing is a load of balogna. I'm not saying that I disagree with their conclusions. They could be right. Here is the problem I have, the data the paper is based on is worthless. "Why do you say that?" or "How can their data be wrong in a peer reviewed journal?" you may ask?

Here is why it is wrong.

Determination of gender was based, in part, on a highly fallible (and stereotype laden) method. Listening to the sound of the player's voice is hardly a reliable method for determining gender. But that's not even the worst error made in this supposedly peer reviewed article (What does this say about the peers?). From a statistical viewpoint there is insufficient data to draw any conclusions about the overall population. A sample of several hundred is needed in order to determine the percentage of characters chosen. Even if we accept that error (8%, plus or minus) isn't that bad, the breakdown for male vs female in each character class is unacceptable. In order to be about 70% confident that our results are within 10% of reality (For you non statistics people, this level of confidence is only slightly better then using a coin toss to pick the right answer on a true false test.) a sample of 25 individuals for each character type needs to be surveyed. The most people sampled of any class in this article is 7!

Go ahead, check my math...

So this article is worthless. What's worse is that it supposedly past a peer review. This article provides evidence of the reasons to use wiki based reference. When you limit who can review an article you are limiting what errors can be found. By opening up who can review an article you can actually increase the reliability of information presented. Academia doesn't seem to like this since I've heard countless professors say that wikipedia can't be used as a source. However it's doubtful that the type of egregious errors in this article would have lasted long on a site like wikipedia. </rant>

(1) DiGiuseppe, Nicholas, and Bonnie Nardi. "Real Genders Choose Fantasy Characters: Class Choice in World of Warcraft." First Monday 12.5 (2007). Print.

Blog #7: Virtual Gender

Hopefully, I don't find myself alone in the class in saying I remember playing Super Mario Bros. 2 when I grew up. I'll admit that I never had enough opportunity (or maybe skill) to master this game as I had it's previous version. This release was novel in that it allowed you to select the avatar that you wished to represent you on screen.

The choices available are

(from left to right)

1. Mario - Male

2. Luigi - Male

3. Toad - Umm...

4. Princess - Female

Let's dispense with the obvious.

Suspenders + mustache + hat = male

Dress + crown + pink = female

But what about Toad? Honestly, it's really hard to tell. However, let's ignore Toad for a moment. Clearly we are dealing with a situation where the player is forced to pick an avatar that fits their gender identity. Obviously, this game was geared towards male players since there are two male avatars and only one female avatar. I suppose men had the option of trying on the female configuration, but in the age this game was released, that was not going to happen. This game is so sexist!

Okay, is it really sexist? Upon closer examination, while most of the characters are clearly identifiable as male or female the gender typing is really weak. Game play between the different characters is identical. They have the same skills and can be controlled in the same ways. If it weren't for the mustache (which is hard to make out) Mario and Luigi could just as easily be women. The biggest clue that Princess is female is the color of her dress (is that really a dress?) While we can quickly associate gender to these three characters, the association is not very strong. And then there is Toad, practically genderless. Is that a dress? Is Toad topless? The hat is reminiscent of something feminine, but it's hard to place and there's no mustache to give it away. With Toad we are lacking the stereotypical clues that define the character as masculine or feminine. With all this in mind, the question is, "Does it matter what character you pick?" It wouldn't be a stretch to conclude that this game was designed to appeal to any gender.

I remember when this game was played, the most often selected characters were Toad and Princess. Not because we were trying on a new identity, but because the images were new and novel. We didn't imagine ourselves as being feminine, selecting them had more to do with breaking the status quo. The characters identities weren't strong enough for us to attach ours to theirs. Because we didn't identify with the avatar, even though gender is identifiable between the avatars, there were few if any gender-subject-configurations.

Schliener argues that the development of self perception is influenced by the connection of the player to the avatar.

"the construction of the player's feminine identity emerges from the reflective connectivity of the player's identification with the avatar's movements in the game space." (Schliener, 223)

Meaning that as you control the avatar, it's like looking in a mirror and so you begin to view the avatar as yourself. However, from my own personal experience and my observation of others, this connection to the avatar was not present in Super Mario Bros. 2. Without that connection, no "wearing" [of] a feminine identity (Schliener, 223) is possible. This is not to say that Schliener is wrong. In more advanced video games where there is higher fidelity, a stronger identity, and flexibility in controlling the character the connection may be strong enough to wear a new role. But I don't think the attachment is as automatic as she portrays it to be. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, attaching your identity to that of the avatar is literally in the hands of the person with the controller.

Bibliography

Schleiner, Anne-Marie. "Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games." Leonardo 34.3 (2001): 221-26. Print.

Super Mario Bros. 2, Mario Madness. Redmond, WA: Nintendo of America Inc., 1989. Computer software.

Blog #6: Avatar

Avatar (1) is full of stereo types that dichotomize male and female gender roles. The first obvious one is the tribal leadership positions. The leader of the clan is always the male and the spiritual leader is his wife. This implies that men are leaders or doers while women are advisers or thinkers. There are other less obvious dichotomies in the same theme. If you look within the different groups of characters in the movie we can see them. Within the military personal we have Trudy and the Colonel. The colonel blindly seeks the destruction of the "savages" for the profit of the company. Whereas Trudy thinks about her orders and only does what she feels is right. While Home Tree is being destroyed she says "Screw this, I didn't sign up for this shit" and leaves the action. The other male military characters simply follow orders. In the group of Avatar drivers there is a clear difference between Dr. Augustine and Jake Sulley. The doctor has been trying to help the natives for quite some time, her role however is limited to a diplomatic one. This is underlined during the scene where the dozers are closing in on home tree. Jake smashes the cameras delaying the progress. Shortly after, Grace tries to explain why the company shouldn't continue. While both approaches fail, Grace is given the role of advisor while Jake is given the role of doer. Even norm seems to follow what he is asked to do.

As the movie progresses Jake takes on several roles. In the beginning his identity as one of the Na'vi is like that of a child. He even says himself "My cup is empty, trust me." At this point he is simply following orders as his male stereo type dicatates. His purpose is to gain information on how the people can be coerced into moving either through bribes or force. Later on he defines himself as a hunter. He becomes, in fact, one of the greatest hunters "Toruk Makto" (Rider of last shadow) which rallies the Na'vi to defend their home.

This is an ideal parallel of how I believe Cheung would view personal homepages. In the begining, Jake's "homepage" is empty. His motivation for creating one may even be disingenuous. However, through the process of adding content (via the Na'vi instruction) Jake tries on different identities. At first he tries on that of a spy. He finds as he interacts through is that this identity doesn't suit him. Later he tries on that of a lover. He finds that this identity suits him best and he continues to expand on it taking on the identity of hero. However, at this point his avatar's identity and his identity are separate. He must make a final jump in order to resolve his non-virtual with his virtual identities. One of them must die. This is done through the help of the Na'vi global network and he leaves his non-virtual self behind leaving only his virtual self.

It is possible that this is going on today. Though the movie makes the process of losing your non-virtual self as glamourous I wonder if that would be true in real life. Certainly, today, the virtual identity by itself would be very limited in what it can experience. With current technology you can escape the non-virtual completely. You eventually have to deal with the demands of our physical bodies. But in the future, could it be possible to dump our consciousness into a virtual identity and completely discard our non-virtual self? What would be the outcome of such a possibility? It sounds great, our virtual selves can become whatever we want them to be (Is this the new fountain of youth?). But real problems would need to be addressed. Such a change would destroy our current system of values and what we think about right and wrong. Even the definition of existence and life would need to be modified. Hopefully, if (and I'm not sure I'd be happy to see it happen) this technology comes into being we will have evolved to meet these new philosophical dilemmas.

Bibliography

(1) Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang. Lightstorm Entertainment, 2009. DVD.

Blog #1: What is Rhetoric

Quite simply rhetoric is the process of communication. More specifically in Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric(1) it is defined in the following quote.

"How we perceive, what we know, what we experience, and how we act are the results of our own symbol use and that of those around us; rhetoric is the term that captures all of these processes. For us, rhetoric is the human use of symbols to communicate."

The article goes on to state that this is a sufficiently broad definition to cover how most people understand the term. It is indeed broad. What we know, experience and do covers the entire human condition. To say all that is due to symbol use, and that symbol use is rhetoric is the equivalent of saying that everything can be viewed as rhetoric. I don't think that rhetoric is quite so broad, but I'll admit that there is plenty of room to make that argument. I believe the intent of the definition is more narrow. Rhetoric is more then just observing a scene or an event. Rhetoric is when you experience something and interpret it as symbolic of something else. For example, experiencing a tragedy and then thinking that God is telling you to change your life is rhetoric. Weather or not God is actually speaking in this case is irrelevant to this discussion. The fact that one thing was taken to represent something else is what matters. Foss et al. do not seem to care weather the meaning was purposeful or not, but simply that it was taken symbolically.

I have a Facebook account as do many others. I use it to keep family and friends up to date with what is going on in my life. Most of that provides rather boring examples of rhetoric. Any time we use the written word, we are necessarily using rhetoric. However, what I think is more interesting is the underlying messages we are sending. These messages are derived from symbols that include more then words. They include things such as voice, timing, and sincerity. In many ways this rhetoric is more important to us then the apparent meaning.

Part of the reason I use Facebook is because I am lazy about communicating with people. I prefer to spend my time doing something other then repeating stories about events in my life. Unfortunately, if I don't spend the time telling others about what is going on in my life, my friends and family might think that I don't care (An example of rhetoric I don't intend to send). By posting information about what is happening with my life, the underlying message I'm trying to send is "Hey everyone, I care about you and I haven't forgotten you." I suppose this is the message that a lot of people are trying to send on Facebook. But people send other messages. One of my "friends" in Facebook is running for Benton County Auditor. He's not really my friend. In fact I can't even remember his name to type it in this post. But he sent me a friend request, and I accepted it. He posts comments on a variety of topics, many of which are obviously politically oriented. However his actions of friending me, and posting this information is probably symbolic of something else. The interpretation he is hoping we'll get from these symbols is "I am connected to you, I have your interests at heart and this is why you should vote for me."

These underlying messages are great, but there is a problem. Because it is based on symbols, you can never know if it is representative of the truth. This is where the rub comes in whenever people talk about rhetoric. When something is rhetorical, you are not experiencing it first hand. In the example above, my friends and family don't feel the emotion that I care about them. Nor do I know if the candidate really has my interests at heart. What happens if he isn't concerned about my interests? To use a more concrete example, if I give you a $1000 (a symbol of a quantity of value, is money rhetoric?) you trust that it is authentic. But, if I give you counterfeit money you might act as though it were real, and that could cause you problems. For example when you deposit it in the bank they probably won't accept it, or worse you'll be arrested.

Throughout history, people have argued about the wisdom of emerging communication technologies. Certain philosophers from antiquity condemned rhetoric when it was just an emerging field of study. The catholic church rebuked the printing press for many of the same reasons. And in recent times, many people have criticized the internet. Why do these arguments persist? I contend that it is because they were never resolved. Each new technology has the problem that if its symbols are not used to represent the truth (if they are counterfeit), the technology will have a negative effect on the receivers. But, if they do represent the truth (I'll leave the definition of "the truth" for another day) the person receiving the symbols will be benefited.

Bibliography

(1) Foss, Sonja K., Karen A. Foss, and Robert Trapp. Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric.

3rd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 2002. Print.

Beginning the journey

I don't normally do things like "blog." Why do we have to call it a blog? Why not just use something like, oh I don't know, journal. That's what it really is anyway. Okay, so why did I pick this particular title for my blog. First of all the primary reason for making this blog is for DTC 475. Actually, I don't expect anyone who is not in that class to read this, so I won't even explain what it is. In the process of searching for a tool to do my blogging, I entered "Blog" into my trusty google search bar. Then, on the results page, I saw a category on the left hand side for blogs. Sounds like just what I'm looking for. What I didn't know was that would lead me to a list of blogs about blogs. I thought it was funny that I was taking a course that was, at least in part, going to study blogs and that I was now looking at a list of blogs about blogs. Hence the title. So for anyone who is lost, don't be surprised if you can't make the logical leap to connect what I just described to the title. This particular post is really about me warming up, so feel free to ignore it.