Race, Rhetoric, and Technology by Adam J. Banks

I really, really liked this book. As with any text there's some shortcomings to Banks's posits (which I'll unpack more later), but overall I found this book to be compelling and relevant to what I want to do in my own scholarship.

In the first chapter, Banks lays out his overarching argument about how he will be looking at  "...African American history as reflected through its rhetorical production shows a group of people who consistently refused to settle for the limiting parameters set by either/or binaries" (2). An even better explanation Banks offers is this: "...the Digital Divide, and the larger history of African American is, essentially a rhetorical problem" (12). What a great way to phrase so much of what happens within exclusion. To put this in my own words, I found Banks's arguments within his book to be compelling because he's looking at African American's rhetorical tradition as rooted in oratory and the ways in which it informs, sustains, complicates, and differentiates people from white English. Before I move on, I need to unpack a few of the adjective I used. Complicates: I'm not suggesting that coming from an oral tradition complicates issues for the speaker/writer/consumer (although that is valid, and something Banks does bring up, but not what I want to discuss here), but rather how it complicates white English. Banks explores the ways that anyone who doesn't speak white isn't speaking correctly. Banks is pointing out something before Vershawn Young did with Young's article "Should Writers Use They Own English?" which is it's folk's assumptions about how people who don't use white English that really needs to change rather than the speakers themselves (Young 62). Banks points out "assumptions about the supposed inferiority by African American varieties of English that have dismantled consistently by Black and White linguists alike..." (13). This is what I feel Banks is trying to break down; the presuppositions people have about what is right (white) and what isn't acceptable. Banks is calling for a different look at for whom technology serves---and doesn't. Banks traces the history of how Black Americans don't have the same access to computers and how that is the first step in creating so-called Digital Divide. Banks is extenuation the conversation the Selfes; brought up about how computer icons were developed based on a very specific demographic, while others are excluded from participating. Banks writes about how it's not so much that Black Americans aren't "able" to do science, but rather how it's been mostly in English departments where African American studies lay, and how sciences and technological communication could do a better job of looking at issues of marginalized groups rather than relying on old narratives that aren't true (14). What I wanted from Banks, and something that Young does in his article, is to argue in the manner that he is defending. To illuminate: Young writes in Black dialect throughout his paper, which makes his point all that more compelling and striking. Young is demonstrating how we all can still understand one another, even if we don't all use the same dialect. If Young hadn't used the dialect he did, it would have felt like a cheat- something that I feel Banks kind of does. Banks argues for a oratory method, yet he's writing a book. He's calling for people to reassess their assumptions about dialects, but uses standard American academic writing to do so. 

It's kinda funny how one of the technical and professional communication journals Banks mentioned is Journal of Technical Writing and Communication because it's one journal that I have read extensively for another class. I totally missed how the journal elides any concerns for race and gender; the only "international" concerns they brought up was how Canadian and British folks teach technical communication in the classroom. So, not at all diverse whatsoever.

Another idea Banks puts forth is "that even now, with all of our technologies, oratory is still the genre of public engagement--the genre where the work of any group of people commit to begins" (29). I feel like this nicely ties-in to some of the other books we've read, the Castelles's book for example. I'm rather inclined to agree: there's no better rhetorical call to action than that from the skilled rhetor. Of course, Banks goes into the oratory skills of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. as example of Black Americans and use of strong oratory skills. So, on the one hand I was intrigued with Banks's ideas of oratory, I also wonder if he's trapping himself in the "single story."

Today I had a chance to watch a TED Talk with Chimamanda Ngozi (whose TED Talk I have included below), where she spoke about the perils of sticking to a "single story." Ngozi gave the example of being from Nigeria and being faced with presuppositions about how she must have grown up. Yes, she admits, food became scarcer as prices rose, but she also had enough to eat and wasn't starving. Ngozi's example is what she is warning against, that there's only one story to any group of people. She challenges us to write a different narrative, and gives the example of rather than starting a story with South Africa after colonization, start with the fall of its government and, as Ngozi points out, you'll have a very different narrative. So, that what I wonder about with Banks's book, that he's kind of falling into that single story of Black Americans primarily using oratory to express ideas. It seems to me like he forgetting about whole other swathes of stories.

The last issue that Banks brings up that I want to include in today's blog is found within chapter 3, and the Mike Wallace report on the Nation of Islam. Banks close reads how Wallace continually cast the Nation of Islam into suspicious lighting, drawing unfair conclusions about what the group was doing, in order to persuade (white) people to be afraid of them. Banks points out that what might have happened if "Lomax were the series' producer, had access to African American camera crews and research staff, and the freedom to present his results to an African American audience unfettered by the restraints of overbearing White public opinion that was already formed and unwilling to be persuaded?" (53). Yeah, what if? It's so important for as many different voices as there can be to add to the conversation; conversation that happens anywhere and under any circumstance. Banks points out that at the time the Nation of Islam news report was broadcast, it was during the days of objective reporting. Snort. As if. And to think of how many (white) people Wallace et al, had believing that the group was up to no good and to fear them, yikes.

I found Banks's book to be super interesting. It helps me think about technology through a critical race lens, and offers more than what the Selfes' article did. Banks is making the call for us to change the narrative surround the rhetoric of technology. Are you in or are you out?  

Link to video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

(Dis)ability

Yergeau et al.

Initial impressions: Oh, great! Another multi-modal essay. How cute. Yes, the authors acknowledge that there’s limitations to their webtext, and yes, I get the purpose of creating a multi-modal text to support the push to wanting students to create multi-modal stuff on their own, but it’s just too cute for me. I don’t like it. I don’t like that there’s no linier way to read this, but rather links I gotta click in order to get anywhere in this webtext. Yes, I get what they’re trying to do, and no, I still don’t like it. It takes away rather than adds to their argument, even though they probably thought it would; Like they say: “The modality of this webtext invites yet more of us to experience this game-changing series of presentations”. Like I said, it’s too cute.

“Over There”

I’m already pissed at this “article.” I wonder who Self et al. are talking to when they mention the writing classroom. Are they really aiming this towards English instructors at all levels, or is it slanted more towards the English 101 teacher?

“Space/Presence” by Price

Funny how she’s arguing for an accessible space through modalities such as texting as a way for folks to have more access (she brings up deafness and multi-modality as a way to make the classroom more accessible for folks), but completely overlooks (quite intentionally, I’m sure) the issue of access for impoverished students, non trad students, and Luddites. Nice way to exclude all sorts of people.

When it comes to “Community” and “Reason” parts of this webtext, are they really necessary? What’s wrong with mental illness? What’s wrong with accommodations? Again, I get what they’re doing. Really I do. And it does have some import to think about the ways in which we use language as it does matter; it shapes us, gives voice to the places we’ve been, and offers tells on where we’re from. But what are these authors really contributing? They’re only substituting words for other words that may/may not be more accessible.

The Slatin piece is in such contrast to the Yergeau et al. webtext. Slatin has scrub all of the fanciness from his webtext and works in a bare-bones approach. His reason is that what’s visually pleasing for non-(dis)abled folks isn’t necessarily good for (dis)abled folks. I liked this piece much better than the last one. I feel like Slatin is calling attention to the same issues that the other folks did, but in a more practical, less ablest-in-their-own-kinda-way. It’s interesting how he numbers all of his points, rather than as one fully articulated essay. For me, it did make points more digestible, and easier to go back and re-read some point I wanted to revisit.

Now there’s the Dolmage piece Writing Against Normal: Navigating A Corporeal Turn where we’ve made the turn back into academia land. I’ll say that for this week’s readings is that they have run the gamut (for better or for worse). I’m in a bad mood, and maybe that’s effecting my reading of these texts too much. I was automatically put off by Dolmage’s assertion of “The dominate discourse surrounding the teaching of writing…” (115). Now the reason this ticks me off so much is that when bloody academics are envisioning “the writing classroom” what they mean is English 101. And who’s teaching English 101? Contingent faulty, that’s who. And I’m bloody tired of these folks thinking that they can come in, talk about what’s going on there, and offer their own scholarship about how to run a “writing classroom” when they don’t even TEACH these bloody classes themselves.

I do like this business of revision as Dolmage sets out: that it’s a way for each of us-teacher and student alike- to come to know our own writing better, yet the other side of the coin is that it can also be a way to “perform a drama of normativity” (117). The former speaks loudly to one of my loves (the writing center) and how giving and receiving feedback or talking about writing with other writers helps us to get a deeper sense of our rhetorical situation as well as attending to audience needs. Yet, feedback does have a way of making writing normative; to continue the standard academic ways of writing and thinking, at the cost of creating spaces for different voices to emerge.

I also like how Dolmage re-imagines embodiment not just as peoples with (dis)abilities, but also how the text itself can be (dis)embodied. By using wikis as an example, Dolmage is demonstrating how a “differently-embodied writing process” functions (120). I find this to be a super-rad notion, and something that can be done in English 101 rather seamlessly, rather than some of the theories scholars are putting out there.

Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto"

I'm a bit perplexed with the chapter "Cyborg Manifesto" in Haraway's book. Yes, it's interesting that she's trying to combine notions of feminist and materialist theories with cyborgs. Yes, the feminist movement is fractured and it's important to think of ways of suturing the splinters together. Yes, it's interesting the way Haraway starts off the chapter with the notion of blasphemy as "ironic faith." But, I'm dubious as to how this fits in with Haraway's larger points of how "[cyborg] imagery can help express two crucial arguments in this essay: first, the production of the universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake that misses most of reality..." (316). Okay, let's look at that a little closer. Of course the use of essentialzing within theory can be complicated, reductive, and dismissive of other lived experiences. Yet what I feel is going on in this chapter is more of the same ol' same ol' in that narrative of the us's and the them's. Haraway even alludes, at one point, how we all have a tendency to talk about the us's and the them's: "It has become difficult to name one's feminism by a single adjective- or even to insist in every circumstance upon the noun" (296). For the majority of this particular page Haraway is talking about how the false dichotomy of the us's and the them's, while also hinting at one of her larger points that a "totalizing theory is a major mistake..." What I take issue with here is that she's making a strong point for how splintered feminism has become, how we could look more for the similarities rather than the differences, yet later she goes on to dismiss the notion of the we. Haraway furthers my umbridge by using lots of almost-but-not-quite scary quotes, for instance when she writes 'us.' It's jarring, but not in a productive way, but rather a dismissive and arrogant way. I think Haraway missed a great opportunity to call out factions and say, hey! The more we talk about the us's and the them's the more it splinters us, and the more the ideology survives to create the sexist, classist, racist world we live in.

I'm just fed up with the notion that we're all so different. "Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus." The ideologues want us to buy into these notions that we're worlds apart from one another; ideology works better when folks are alienated from what's important rather than in-tune with what is. So I'm bloody tired of hearing these narratives, particularly from folks who ostensibly try to build up a we narrative, only to knock it down right away. Take this bit from Haraway: "...and ironically corporate executives reading "Playboy" and anti-porn radical feminists will make strange bedfellows in jointly unmasking the irrationalism" (301). Seems like Haraway's trying to inspire a we narrative, but look closer at the sentiment. Haraway is setting up an assumption for her reader, one that makes the CEO a white male fat cat, and the radical feminist a white woman who's seen as a crazy person to the CEO. At least that's what I envision as I read and re-read that passage. But maybe it's reversed; maybe they're not white; and why think they're so far apart anyway? At the core, we're all human. And yes (to Haraway's point), it's tricky to universalize humans. But I argue that at our core, we're all the same. No matter where one lives; what cultural influence one has; etc. And what's universal about humans is that we all want to be loved, and we all avoid suffering. Now, it gets more complicated the more we branch out from the core, but I think that if we approached each human on that fundamental level, then it would change much of the interactions we have, and could lead to some real, indelible change. This is where I feel the major pitfall of Haraway's manifesto lays is that while she's arguing for a cyborg look at feminist et al. issues, to move away from the white male narrative, she's really driving it closer to the same ol' ideology that's persevered for eons. This makes me think of the Hayles book, particularly chapter five and her close read of "Limbo." I'm also tying this together with some of the stuff we talked about last week in class about how cyborgs tend to be white males. No one could come up with a non-white cyborg, and while there were a few woman cyborgs, they too weren't peoples of color. So while Haraway is trying to change the face, nature, and conversation surrounding theory, I feel she falls short of her goals by perpetuating some of the same stereotypes she's trying to dispell,

What I think we need to be doing more of is working to create the we narrative. To be inclusive rather than always keeping our eyes on the differences. Because I think it's the similarities between us humans that is more compelling than the differences. Just sayin'. 

Hayles's How We Became Post-Human

Hayles's book is super hard for me to pin-down with a summary. There's a lot of stuff here that I'm not fully understanding with this book, so Gentle Reader keep that in mind as we walk through this blog together. To sum up Post-Human, Hayles writes about the ways in which "information has lost its body" (2). She goes through different mediums to illustrate her points: from science, to digital technologies, to literary criticism, Hayles leaves no stone unturned. What I liked about the first couple of chapters is how Hayles describes what posthuman is. There's a great (although too lengthy to use here) definition on pages 2-3 where she fully lays out how she's defining posthuman. I hadn't really thought about how "information [loses] its body" when it goes digital. Coupling that with what posthuman is (mostly that is to say it's more than just humans modifying their bodies), gave me a new perspective on the conversations surrounding digital humanities. So far we've covered how online spaces shape us, how we shape them, and what it means to be human within those spaces. Here, Hayles is looking at how human and machine are one, yet different.

Quotes/Compelling Issues:


"Although the 'posthuman' differs in its articulations, a common theme is the union between human and machine" (2).

This business of posthuman is, of course, essential to understanding the larger points she brings up throughout her book. When I first read the title, not knowing anything about what posthuman means, I figured it's "after-human" that Hayles would be discussing. That may be part of it, but this quote is getting closer to what I think her book is about: again, how human and machine work together, and how they differ. I'm getting closer to understanding the ideas Hayles posits, but it's still difficult for me to soundbite this back to a reader.

"[...]Haves of sentences spoken at different times can be amalgamated to let a speaker hear himself say the opposite of what he knows he said" (Roy Walker qtd. in Hayles, 210). This is regarding how record recordings, particularly on tape, can change what a person says.

What a super weird (and cool) idea! It's something anyone, with the right equipment and the right mind to do so, can create an alternate information that's separate from both the body of the person speaking, but how the technical/digital part can also be segmented apart, and put together in a different order. Hmm, that may not make much sense, so let's explore this further... What, I think, Hayles is talking about here through Walker is not how stuff can be edited to make anyone say anything, but rather differentiates how information becomes disembodied (a word she uses a lot, so riffing off of her). With this quote in particular, Hayles shows how tricky disembodies information is; that it's fluid.

"...displaces one definition of 'human' with another but also in a more disturbingly literal sense that envisions humans displaced as the dominate form of life on the planet by intelligent machines" (283). Hayles is writing about how posthuman invokes both "terror and pleasure" (283).


After reading this bit, I was skeptical about how much of this could be true. Can machines be intelligent enough on their own that they'll supersede humans? Doesn't this kind of intelligence rely on human intervention to survive (be it at the creation point, or to continue functioning)? This reminds me of T.V. Reed's book with regard to the notion that we shouldn't be super-suspicious, nor super-willing to buy into the idea that technology-in all its incarnations- will be the ruin/the saving grace for humans. This quote is straddling the line of being too suspicious of technology. No wait, I take that back. Its gone over the line and over the precipice. Now I just read the quote again. Maybe it's the case that machines have taken over in the less nefarious sense of our dependence on them makes life as we Americans know it possible. There's not a moment that goes by where I'm not using some machine to do something. Obviously I'm typing right now on a computer that's hooked up to the Internet (disembodied information).

Overall, what I found to be the most compelling about this book is how Hayles is taking the philosophical view of how we find our body, and applies that to posthumanism. It's impossible to find the body: if a person's arms are missing, it's not as if she ceases to have a body. Same applies with information in digital spaces.   

Class Yesterday

Whoop. I totally forgot to blog about class yesterday, so I'm doing this now!

I got some feedback on folks about my writing center paper. I've been thinking about, rather than taking the one with one to one with many, changing that to one with a few. Specifically looking at how to do this work within studio classes like the 102 groups we have at WSU. So, we knocked around a few ideas, and I got a chance to talk out some of what's in my head.

Article Blog # 2

I have come, Gentle Reader, to that part of the semester where my brain is having more and more trouble with producing understandable pieces of prose. I’m fried, in other words. So, for this week’s blog I’m doing an old-fashioned pull-a-quote-and-respond type of analysis. Proceed with caution…

From the Berry et al. book:

Ethnographic practices…need to consider how the classroom is a location that connects to other locations, locations that subjects constantly inhabit, dwell in, and move between" (p. 210). In other words, we need to move beyond the classroom while holding on to pedagogical concerns.

Stopped really paying attention pretty much right after coming across this quote. Rhet folks don’t truly do ethnography; in order to do that, they’d have to be students again, and I don’t see it happening.

From Rubria and Gil-Egui article:

“The first has to do with the change it has caused in the definition of the public opinion’s agenda within Cuba. The first has to do with the change it has caused in the definition of the public opinion’s agenda within Cuba” (154).

This is continual within and throughout Castells book: that social networks have shaped the ways in which a public sees its society. This is much like what the occupy movement gave, I believe, to Americans: that now we have a different discourse that surrounds how we talk about the rich versus the poor.

 “Your blog provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba” (Obama qtd 157).

I don’t remember something like this coming up in Castells’s book, that is, to have a leader of a country praise the work on a blogger.

“Lamrani raises questions about Sanchez’s ability to maintain Generation Y without strong financial and technical support from foreign agencies, pinpoints what he deems to be inconsistencies in Sánchez’s accounts of harassment by the Cuban government  and finally accuses her of profiting from her critical position regarding Cuba’s current affairs” (157).

It’s true that blogs and such can have an unfair slant to the writing. But then, what writing doesn’t? From the words journalists use, to the networks/publications they work for, every bit of political news we consume is going to have some sort of slant to it. So, what becomes crucial here is to ask those rhetorical ethnographic questions of: for whom is this text written, under what circumstance, and for what purpose. While it may be true that no news is impartial or purely objective, I do believe there are truer things out there. It’s something I don’t think enough folks think about; it was hinted within this article and not really found at all within Castells’s book, that it’s our job to choose carefully whose truth we buy into.

“…the majority of respondents saw the Internet as a discursive medium, rather than as a way of becoming involved in ‘real’ collective action or shaping policymaking” (159).

Yes, point very well taken. Castells was remiss in not fully excavating how the social movements were constructed online. There was a bit of this sentiment in the beginning of the Castells book, but this quote hits home more for me because of how social networking sites are typically used, consumed, and viewed. I can see how folks would consider this not the real work of social action, but rather as a hobby. I mean, that’s how facebook, twitter, and others are often used: as the coffee house philosopher. A place where people can say stuff, and get people to respond, but we don’t think enough about how these are sites for conversation; should they also be sites of action?

“Regarding social issues, the loss of civic values and the need for an unrestricted dialogue among all Cubans, both inside and outside the country, are stressed” (162).

It’s rather fascinating how this is a common thread to all social movements, that is, the loss of having basic rights as a human as the impetus behind folks gathering together for change. Castells is right when he writes about how when fear is removed, folks start banding together. It’s a shame it doesn’t happen more often. I think about the ways I was motivated by fear at the insurance company I worked at; I think about the ways in which some not-so-nice folks still try to control me with fear. At one point in the article, Rubria and Gil-Egui write about apathy of the masses. Fear is a good way of creating and sustaining that inertia, because if we didn’t feel like we’re replaceable, if we didn’t fear that we’d lose jobs, if we didn’t fear what others think about our writing, then maybe change would come and stay awhile. Just a thought.

Blog # 5

Overview:

For Manuel Castells's Networks of Outrage and Hope, Castells maps out how current social movements work within the internet age. Castells starts with exploring power dynamics that are the catalyst for social movements; to unpacking how nascent social movements are started when people feel they belong to a group that has the same desires and goals;  then moves to how the social movements From Egypt to America have been shaped and pushed forward by sites like youtube and facebook.  The overall argument is that social movements may not exclusively be held within these online spaces, but these spaces are necessary to look and think about as we enter a new era of social justice (105).

Quotes:

"Coercion and intimidation...are essential mechanisms for imposing the will of those in control of the institutions of power" (4). I love this quote because it reminds me of a lyric from Bob Dylan, in which the great D sings:"One of the boss's hangers-on/Comes to call at times you least expect/Try to bully ya-strong arm you- inspire you with fear/Sometimes it has the opposite effect." I like this quote with regard to this class for two reasons: it's one of the points Castells brings up that has effected me, and it's important to note how social movements are generated in order to understand Castells's book at large. In Nebraska I used to work at an insurance company where one of the head bosses would do a sweep through of the department I worked in. It was a lot like what Dylan was rapping about: she was trying to catch folks on the internet so she could tell our direct boss about it, who would then relay the message to the offender. I'm now in a position where I have more agency over the work I do, and it's much nicer than having someone try to inspire me with fear. Gramsci writes about how when consent is withdrawn, the state flexes. I believe that. Once we get rid of the fear of being fired (been there), of being laughed out of the academy (seriously, I was told this), of knowing that you're being disrespected but feel like you can't do anything about it, once that fear is removed change happens. And it's scary for the powers that be. This quote is important with regard for Castells's overall argument because he reminds us that social movements happen once folks are pushed too far with intimidation and fear, bringing folks together for social change.

"[with regard to the movements in Iceland and Tunisia] In both cases, mobile phones and social networks on the Internet played a major role in spreading images and messages that mobilized people in providing a platform for debate..." (45). Again, I like this quote because it's one of the points I found most compelling in Castells's book, and ties in nicely to his point of how social movements are shaped and driven by social networks. Just like with the 2008 presidential election, regular folks are able to post videos to youtube and facebook to show a different, less subjective view of what's going on with the world. I was living in Lincoln, NE when the occupy movement first got started in NYC. Eventually, as all things have a way of doing, Lincoln had an occupy chapter as well. This iteration of the occupy movement was located in an open space right next to the insurance company I mentioned above. I was attending UNL, which was a short distance from where I worked, and almost daily I would walk by the protesters: reading their signs, listening in on snippets of conversations. One day I decided to talk with one of these folks, and got the information I needed to walk in one of their protests. It was a chilly Saturday morning in November that I laced up my sneakers and went to join the occupy movement. Castells's writes about the movement as having a change your bank day, and that's the day that I happened to march. We walked around the governor's mansion (who happened to be entertaining guests that day), and then down to the Wells Fargo where we proceed to occupy their lobby. Before I had seen with my own eyes what the occupy movement was about, I had read a lot of comments in the local newspaper's online website from folks who didn't understand what the movement was about. I too was worried that the protesters would do something- get pushed too hard by police, or by-standards- causing folks to get seriously hurt and shutting down the whole movement. But once I marched with the other protesters, I realized that it was a completely non-violent group. At one point when we were outside of Wells Fargo, someone yelled, "Fuck the police!" and one of the organizers shut that down quick by saying, "We don't talk to the police that way. They have been very nice to us and we have no reason not to treat them in the same manner." It was interesting, scanning the faces of the protesters: some older, some younger, yet mostly all white. There were even a few professors from UNL that joined the group, but I didn't know any of them personally. We were heckled by a few folks, but mostly people waived or ignored us completely. Maybe the occupy movement didn't last. Maybe it wasn't really supposed to, but what it did do for us is shape the discourse surrounding the rich and the poor.

"Thus the occupy movement was built on a new form of space, a mixture of space of places, in a given territory, and space of flows on the Internet. One could not function without the other..." (168). Again, ties into Castells's larger point of how the social platforms changed the way that social movements were able to take place. Now, folks could be apart of the movement without necessarily getting out of their chairs. This may sound lazy on the outside, but for folks who can't/don't get around easily (and even if they can), the word of occupy movement was able to spread. And it shaped the discourse of a generation.

Blog # 4

This blog post may feel a bit informal, which I hope isn't off-putting to you Gentle Reader. This is a hodge-podge of quotes from Nakamura's Cybertypes and Kristin Arola's It's My Revolution: Learning to See the Mixblood. Here we go:

Nakamura:

“The study of racial cybertypes bring together the cultural layer and the computer layer; that is to say, cybertyping is the process by which computer/human interfaces, the dynamics and economics of access, and the means by which users are able to express themselves online…” (3).

To put this into my own words, cybertypes are the ways in which people of color are viewed online, access issues that accompany the Internet, and how well people of color are able to show their identities online (this can be with regard to avatars, representation/non-representation in video games, or stereotypes of people of color-to name a few).

“I propose that a starting place for reseeing the mixedblood in contemporary terms is to look online to the spaces where users are asserting their identities in ways that illustrate not only the existence and persistence of the mixedblood, but whose visual, aural, and textual choices illustrate the complexities of this category and the embodied nature of the online self” (217).

Again, in my own words I rephrase this as: Let’s look at how people are rhetorically constructing their identities online, and how they chose to race or not race themselves based on their choices. I find this to be more compelling than Nakamura’s cybertyping in, although it’s only 12 years old- way young in human years, it’s already passé for online studies (not in its entirety, but some of the online spaces Nakamura looked at aren’t in vogue anymore). So now we have online communities such as Facebook, where folks can make certain choices about how they want to represent themselves. The Arola article got me thinking about my own: if a person was just creeping on my facebook page, and didn’t know me from Adam, what would they assume about me? I don’t use an actual photo of myself (it’s the panting of Girl with a Pearl Earring only instead of the girl in question, it’s a bulldog’s face). I do have my gender on there for all to see, but I don’t let the public see much more than that. So, what race would they guess I am?

So, whereas Nakamura is suggesting to shift the paradigm of how people of color are represented in online spaces “is to use its own metaphors against itself” (48), Arola makes the call to see how, in this case, mixbloods are representing themselves online, and to look rhetorically on the choices they are making to think through issues of race and identity.

Arola: “This “un-seeing” of Indians exists in part by the denial or brushing over of America’s bloody past and also through the belief that “real” Indians only exist in the stereotypes of what an Indian should look like, act like, and believe in. This act of unseeing comes with a host of problems for full-blooded Indians, including an unseeing by those in power of the political, economic, and social issues relevant to today’s Native American” (215).

Nakamura: “The idea of a nonstereotyped Asian male identity is so seldom enacted in LambdaMOO that its absence can only be read as a symptom of suppression” (39).

What I like about these two closely-related quotes is how stereotyped people of color are within popular culture. Riffing of off Arola’s thought, I too have notice that you never see an American Indian represented in street clothes, but rather always in full regalia; the spectacle of the Other, as Nakamura talks about throughout her book. This is much like how Asians are played onscreen: from Bruce Lee to Bai Ling, there’s a certain look Asian actors are supposed to have. It really is “a trap that fetishizes what it means to be American Indian” (216).  

Blog Post # 3

In Lisa Nakamura's Cybertypes, she is filling in the gap left over from new media studies. Nakamura examines the push from new media studies to separate from humanities to become "a separate, autonomous field, where the historical, aesthetic, cultural and discursive aspects of digitalization of our society may be examined" (Aarseth qtd in Nakamura, 3). The particular gap Nakamura fills in the thought that the Internet is a Utopian place where racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and all other -ism's are eradicated. She introduces the idea of cybertype, "to describe the distinctive way that the Internet propagates, disseminates, and commodifies images of race and racism" (3). Nakamura supports her claim that the Internet isn't a classless, raceless space by looking at how different websites operate by looking at the ways in which different spaces occupy and use cybertype. For example, Nakamura goes into identity tourism, where superficially it appears as these spaces open up avenue's for folks to be who they want without scrutiny. Identity tourists are able to create avatars, where tourists can pick out what race, what hair color, what eye color, etc. they want to have. As Nakamura points out, the problem with identity tourism is that it gives a myopic view of what it means to be another ethnicity, and often leads to stereotyping (33-34).
Nakamura then turns to cyberpunk fiction, both the first and second iterations. She does a fascination job of analyzing the movies Blade Runner, Neuromancer (as examples of first wave cyberpunk), Snow Crash, and The Matrix (as examples of second wave cyberpunk). This section was my favorite of all the book. Nakamura's analysis of how The Matrix works as an anti-racist movie had me thinking about it in a whole new way: "...rather than a place in which race is "transcended" or represented solely by white actors...we are shown a world in which race is not only visible but necessary for human liberation" (73). Love this. Too often movies are whitewashed and the justification is always that white is all colors, so therefore white actors portray all races. Hmm...
I was struck with Nakamura's statement that all cyberpunk has an Asian aesthetic to it. I hadn't considered how futuristic movies have karate moves and Asian-inspired clothing. But it makes sense when Nakamura brings this up that it's a subtle way
My second favorite part of Cybertupes was the chapter regarding headhunting. Nakamura does a short close read on the movie Aliens where she writes about how the body is under attack by "both the antihuman (the alien) and the passing-as-human (the cyborg) seek to gain entry and colonize the character Ripley's human body" (45). Nakamura doesn't go into the gender implications of this, but she does make an interesting point of how xenophobia is played out within cyberpunk movies and cyber sites.
These two chapters are where I feel Nakamura's defense of her claim that cyber places are still raced are the strongest. It's the way she goes into close reading these spaces that I was exposed to a different way of viewing what was going on under the visage of something else (e.g. "strong woman lead" in Aliens, yet there's a good case of how it's propaganda against the Soviets at the time). Overall, I found this book to be compelling. There may have been times where Nakamura was reaching a bit too far with some of her analysis [e.g. when Nakamura's in a chat site and her avatar is dark-skinned. A blonde-hair, light-skin woman give Nakamura a light-skinned head for her avatar as if this is irrefutable proof that the woman is trying to say that white skin is better (52)], but she does the vigorous rhetoric that's needed to unpack and unearth the ways in which the color line is visible on Internet and cyberpunk spaces.

Addendum to post 2

Whoop. Forgot to include the link I alluded to in my blog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

Blog Post # 2

For the second half of Reed's book, Reed continues along the vein of the pros and cons of digital technologies. Chapter 6, "Does the Internet Have a Political Bias?" delves into intricate political issues like Obama's run for president during both elections. I found this section particularly compelling section because of my interest in politics. The '08 campaign for both Obama and McCain marked a shift away from advertisements made only by the politician's ad campaigners to regular folks making youtube videos in support (or opposition to) the candidate. I was fascinated at how people were getting involved with the process in ways that were, until then, unheard of. Anyone could make a video for youtube for millions to see, and the best part was that the candidate didn't have to spend funds on these videos, yet reaped the benefits of more exposure. The videos showed what was on the minds of Americans: why they supported who they did, for what reasons, and in some cases had a more authentic feel than videos disseminated by a politician's supporters.

Reed doesn't just limit the conversation to obvious political issues. On page 130 Reed riffs off of Ella Baker with differentiating between mobilizing and organizing people for a movement; "Mobilization refers to the process by which inspirational leaders or other persuaders can get large numbers to join a movement or engage in a particular movement action. Organization entails a more sustained process as people come to deeply understand a movement's goals and their own power to change themselves and the world." This lengthy quote contributes to Reed's argument by drawing attention to the various ways people make political statements on facebook et al., and also contemplates how much, or little, an act is politically. An example to illuminate what I'm trying to say, Reed offers the example of The Harry Potter Alliance, an online community whose members think through social justice and literacy issues by using the Potter books as a template. Reed enumerates the changes this group was able to make globally, and uses it as an example of how apathy and inertia isn't as widespread that some folks think (130). Yet, the pendulum can swing the other way. Reed gives examples on the other side such as hate groups creating pages that would catfish folks who use certain keywords, allowing them to spread their ideas to unsuspecting people (131).

As mentioned above, I found this chapter compelling because of the own questions it lead me to raise. How much 'civic' is in a movement when that movement is online? Why would people prefer to protest over, say, facebook rather than march in a rally? There's (potentially) less to lose with an online forum than having to march: there's no police officers armed with mace online. There's less personal human interaction online than in real life. Yet, as I thought about that last one, I immediately thought about the Bob Dylan (yes, I can feel your eyes rolling, but deal with it) fan club I'm apart of on facebook. I was reading a post by a fellow a few days ago where he wrote about his nephew battle with a disease (I don't remember which one now), and how Dylan's music helped pull both he and his nephew through a difficult time. Granted, this bloke could have been lying, but to what end? And, maybe just maybe, he was more authentic because he didn't have to say difficult things face-to-face, but rather monitor-to-monitor. I don't think there's an easy answer to this question, and I'm still working this one out for myself. I was yet again impressed by the level of detail Reed put into this book. It seems to me like no stone went uncovered. Reed expertly ties these, sometimes seemingly disparate ideas together to show that there's a lot to consider with regard to digital technology, and to not get carried away by saying that it's the best or that it's the worst thing for humanity.

Chapter 7 had me rollin' my eyes at the title. It's a tired old argument that games make us more violent and sex-crazed. Reed brought up many good points for why games don't do this, namely that there are lots of gamers out there who don't commit crimes. And, again, it's the age-old argument that TV, music, you name it, makes us this or that. But, it was important that Reed include this chapter. It would have been remiss to not consider the ways in which race, gender, and class are played out on games, and how that supports/subverts normative thoughts. What I mean by that is how, "people way be more actively engaging the stereotypes, may, for example, be killing racially coded aliens or fantasy creatures. or shooting 'redskins.'" I don't know much about gaming, so I hadn't thought about the implications of the roles some characters in games play, and how they're (mis)representations of marginalized groups.

For chapter 8, "Are Kids Getting Dumber as Their Phones Get Smarter" speaks to the pedagogical side of me, and how I'm trying to shape the way things are played out in class. One idea contained within the chapter really jumped out at me: "But what are we making of all this information? Information, after all, is not knowledge..., and knowledge is not wisdom..." (164). This reminded me of when the printing press first came into play and the explosion of information that accompanied it. It marked a time where there was an abundance of stuff being put out for anyone to see, and it changed how people processed the information. The same thing is happening now, and we gotta sift through the information, asking good questions along the way to find the truer of info out there.
This chapter includes proponents and naysayers alike in how much (or not at all) technology should(n't) be used in the classroom. "This should be seen as neither a cause for alarm nor elation because computers are neither the problem nor the solution to issues in education in the twenty-first century" (166). In the link I have included below, while super-interesting and thought provoking- ends with the notion that "some say technology can save us." What I have appreciated throughout Reed's book is his treatment of technological determinism, urging us all to not say tech is what'll save everything, or destroy everything. Reed points out that technology is a tool and as any tool it's only as good as the person using it. Agreed.

Chapter 9 had me thinking about folks Reed identifies as the "don't wants" (189). Hmm, I hadn't thought about it in that way before. Reed makes the analogy of folks who prefer vinyl to those weirdos who think digital music is better. Obviously I am in the former rather than the latter camp. So the idea of people not wanting to bother with digital technology should also be considered in a broad talk about technology issues. This, yet again again, made me marvel at how much Reed included in his book.

Blog Post # 1

To sum up T.V. Reed's book in one sentence: Don't get lulled into a false sense of security when dealing with technology. Reed delves into the invisibleness of technologies; from thinking about how manual laborers are treated and the conditions they work in (39), to the cultural in the degree to which a culture is considered modern based on its technology (5), Reed covers many hidden- yet right in front of us- areas of digital spaces.

Cool quotes:

Page 53-54: "Fundamental to most of these discussions is some sense that cultural identification in our postmodern era are less stable, more malleable than they have been historically, and that ICTs are playing a role in that destabilization."
- This quote is situated within Reed's discussion of online identities, and how folks are able to create an identity that may not be representative of their actual lives. I am drawn to this quote because it reminds me of my own online identity. I am very much aware that I am creating a certain persona on facebook: my posts tend to be heavy on the silliness, a goodish amount educational (in that I post stuff from places like "I fucking love science." Really, that's what it's called!), and a dash of political happenings, just for good measure. I try my hardest to stay away from anything too personal. I see some of my friends post emotional rants often enough that I've realized I don't want to make the same mistake; facebook isn't a catch-all where anything can and should be posted. A notion that Reed goes into, and hints at with this quote.

Page 87: "However just as it is possible to change the default settings on most programs, it is possible to move beyond the default identity initially built into much digital culture..."
-  I got this gem from chapter four where Reed goes into who's represented most in technology, the internet specifically, and who's not. It's interesting how the icons we all know (e.g. the floppy disk we click to save stuff) has an American-centered way about them; shows where it's made, for whom, and why. It's true that Reed may not be bringing up anything new here, but it fits well with the over-arching argument of how technology can be invisible, and the implications behind that.

Page 111: "These and various other modes of digital diddling in and of themselves are safe sex, in terms of physical health..."
- Wow! I would love to know how much research, and of what kind, Reed put into formatting this chapter! Or maybe I don't... I use this quote because, again, it ties into the larger argument of how innocuous technology seems to be, but when we peel back a layer or two, then more insidious issues crop up. I did have a bit of a problem with this chapter: Reed got too cute with his puns (like, "digital diddling"). Yes, this is geared to undergrads, and yes, it deals with sex, which might be uncomfortable for some folks, but being punny doesn't help.

Issues:

Although Reed may not be bringing up problems that haven't been talked about before, I do find it helpful book to read to give me a sense of what's being discussed in digital culture studies. In the third chapter, Reed writes about shows like MTV's Catfish, where folks can create completely false identities in order to date, panhandle, and/or hurt another person. These are issues that need to be discussed, which are sometimes (conveniently) left out of the discussion of technology. There are plenty of folks out there that think technology is gonna save us; that the only way is the technological way. Reed isn't trying to steer people away from this valuable resource, but to realize and think about how even the internet, an ostensibly amorphous thing, has a physical being.
Chapter four I found to be important with regard to what I study here. Thinking about who is represented and who's isn't is one of the more compelling chapters in Reed's book. Again, what he brought forth may not be ground breaking, but when situated within the larger problem of the ways in which technology is look upon or NOT looked upon, is always an important question to ask.

Concluding thoughts (where'd the time go?!)

"What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about Genre?" Well, according to Henze, tech comms need to be familiar with the company's genre(s) of writing. This will help the tech writer be effective in the job as well as modifying existing genres. To illuminate: Henze gives the example of a tech writer in a cell phone company who had too many steps in an instruction manual, potentially causing customers to think the phone it too difficult to assemble (342). So, it's important for tech writers to review the company's documents to get a feel for the ways a company uses genres. I wonder about genre here: What about audience? Is it more of an issue? It seems like genre is getting thrown around and maybe used incorrectly?

Then there's Blackeslee and Gerald's: "What do Technical Communicators Need to Know about Writing?"

Also thinking about how tech comm need to be flexible enough to adapt to changing workplace environments, but now the focus is on writing. Tech comms need to continually learn about stuff related to the company, expand on writing skills, and learn new technologies (382). I guess what bothers me about this piece is that you could exchange 'writing' with 'genre' and it wouldn't change the meaning of the text all that much. I felt that the collaboration and international environment article were more insightful...

Burnett et al.: "What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about Collaboration?"

Pretty much the same thing as in-class collaboration, only now it's a part of daily life rather than an occasional class activity. This hinges on the other articles because one can use the same idea when it comes to collaboration, that is, one must be flexible, knowing that not all groups will work the same, dealing with "social loafing," conflict and how disagreements can move things forward rather than hinder progression. I think this is super important for folks to realize that the workplaces they enter into could require group work. They will need to know how to do this well, in spite of what they might feel about collaboration vis-a-vis college. 

Amant: "What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about International Environments?"

I kind of liked how Amant made broader cultural awareness as a selling point for tech comm ("...skills than can increase job security today and in the future") (494). This may not be the most noble way of looking at cultural awareness, but it's honest! And I think that even if people go creating more cultural awareness by looking at the monetary aspects, doesn't mean they won't be impacted more ethically in the long run.

This last run of articles has me wondering about the other side of 402: the professional writer and how these articles could be of utility for them as well. Do these articles cross over? If so, which ones and how to make them accessible for the professional writer?

Brad Mehlenbacher: "What is the Future of Technical Communication?"

Mehlenbacher identifies the problem technical communicators face is an issue that "is largely a communication challenge" (189). In today's workplace, the idea of tech communicator as "expert" is mostly nonexistent, so it's more important to be a facilitator between technology and employees. As the workplace is downsized, tech writers are expected to do more. This had led to the increase in "wicked problems" for tech communicators (191). In the past, problems were "tame problems" or issues that have a clear beginning and end. Mehlenbacher uses the example of chess and how one can use similar strategies to win games, strategies that are repeatable, learnable, and can be improved on (191). Wicked problems, on the other hand, have no real beginning or end; strategies that worked in one instance may not work across others; and repetition won't necessarily make for better tech communication. Wicked problems are bad because 1. tech communicators may generalize a problem and apply the same method to any issue that's similar (becoming static rather than dynamic). 2. The general becomes the rigid and used on more complex issues requiring a different solution. 3. Tech communicators can ignore what they don't understand and use what they do know to make it easier for them, rather than what's most valuable for the situation (192).
Because of wicked problems, "rhetorical self-consciousness" is decreasing. To be rhetorically self-conscious, is to know about modes of persuasion, understanding that wicked problems take time to figure out, and to reflect upon the problem (193).
Tech communicators no longer need to be experts. The increase in wicked problems calls for tech comms to be facilitators, "to strive to understand and mediate the relationship between complex symbolic systems and human beings" (194). In other words, to be the go-between technology and humans. Mehlenbacher stresses the importance of tech comms to reflect; to think about what went right and what needs to be improved on; to think about knowledge, how it's gained, what the person already knows, and how to navigate these spaces(197-98).
To teach this, the author also stresses that teachers themselves need to reflect on their "own learning and communication processes" (198). He recommends using many problem-solving activities in class to give students a chance to play around with a new understanding of knowledge so that decisions are influenced by "reflection rather than reaction" (200). That's what the take-away from this article is: with the workplace as it is today, tech communicators need not be experts, but facilitators. To be the most effective, tech communicators need time for reflection on issues, and to not rely on past ways of problem-solving strategies, but to continually revise as to not get lulled into a false sense of security by using strategies that are the easiest.
Connections:
Longo and Fountain- rather than looking to the future, think of the past to unearth what has worked, reflecting on who is serves (or doesn't). Close to Mehlenbacher's article in that it calls for a high degree of reflection.

Swarts- wants tech communicators to " understand the user's tasks and the functional capabilities of the tools used" (146). Goes along with future of tech writing as being the facilitators between technology and humans.

As I was reading this I was reminded of Johnson's "user-friendly" posit. Mehlenbacher wants tech communicators to be better equipped at solving problems and being mediators of technology and other employees.

Questions:
Is it possible to do the level of reflection Mehlenbacher's asking for? He admits that the workplace has become "busier." If tech communicators are on board with this idea of reflection, what if the higher-ups at a job aren't? What if they're more concerned with product than process?
 

Because Lauren always has cool pictures in her blog, here's a gratuitous picture of my Ry-guy 

(Don't be) Jealous of My Boogie

This week I had the nicely titled, "Living Documents Liability versus the Need to Archive, or Why (Sometimes) History Should be Expunged" by Beverly Sauer.
Sauer identifies the problem of "living documents" (which I'll get to unpacking that in a moment) and how the use of cultural studies can help technical communicators better write about risk in high stakes occupations. Cultural analysis already deals with "economic and political dimensions of science," so it only makes sense to integrate the two fields. But it's not a one-way street: she also acknowledges that technical communicators can help cultural studies, which I will elucidate later (172).
Sauer is concerned with "living documents," which are documents that are always changing to keep up with "new information, new technologies, and changing local and institutional practices" (172). She feels that using a cultural analysis lens will help technical communicators ask questions like, who is writing the documents, for what purpose, who does it serve, and what should be included in the document (175-76). So, cultural analysis then can help technical communicators by close reading documents to analyze risk for certain times in history. And it's important for tech communicators to help cultural studies folks by cluing them into moments where writing isn't sufficient in understanding and describing risk (177-78).
Sauer uses coal mines most specifically as the subject to demonstrate how to apply cultural theory. She points out how hard it is to write standards when dealing with a high risk environment where people's lives are at stake.
This is where the issue of having "living documents" and outdated material is detrimental to workers' safety. Sauer's answer is to remove the extraneous information completely from the "living document," so that it can best indicate where potential risks are, and for workers to be able to respond appropriately (180). To be clear, she is not suggesting to throw away documents, but to remove the outdated material and store it in archives.
This brings us back to Sauer's main point that tech communicators and cultural studies theorists can work together reciprocally to make better decisions on what needs to stay in a document, what needs to be removed, and what users really need to understand from the document (186). Or, as I like to think of it: don't be jealous of my boogie, let's boogie together. (I say this because there's too much dissonance between academic disciplines, and if you know the song I'm referring to by RuPaul, then you'll know it's a good metaphor for academia.)

Questions:
Of course I gotta ask it: how to implement this into the classroom? It seems like Sauer is writing to an audience who's maybe more in the field rather than teaching it. So, it seems hard to put this into practice in a classroom, but it is important to think about. Do you think students would be receptive to working with cultural studies folks? As I mentioned in my parenthetical comments, the sciences and humanities don't get along so well. I have never understood this, other than we're just skeptical of each other because we don't understand each other enough. Sauer's idea of bringing the two together are spot on (we could get a whole lot more done if we had each other's backs), but what needs to happen first?

Connections:
Graybill: Like Sauer, Graybill also argues that cultural studies can help tech communicators identify problems of authority and create social change (151-52). Unlike Sauer, Graybill goes into specific detail on methodologies, which makes me think his piece was written more for teachers of writing, rather than how Sauer seems to be talking to professionals in the field.

Britt: Calling for cultural studies into tech communication, but also adding sociology and anthropology to look at institutions (134). I find it very interesting how Britt is calling for a critique of "microinstitutions" like a writing center (135). Disciplines are too small and "macroinsitutions" are too big. Britt sees that institutions get too big and stop accounting for itself, so that's where cultural studies et al. can help bring into focus what goals an institution has and if they need changes. I like the idea of bringing the wc into the mix, but the problem there is that it has no real power to change institutional power, and wc's are now going through a shift since computers have entered the mix.

I also wonder about the Russell article from earlier this semester. It was the one where he said that lit crit should say out of tech and professional writing classes. Kind of seems like maybe that argument has been blown out of the water, but I still wonder if Russell has a point in keeping the two separate.
 

The world of research has gone berserk. Too much paperwork.

While fumbling my way through this week's readings, I am beginning to notice an underlying problem that, although talked about at great length, hasn't been nailed down yet: the problem of assessment in writing classes. I don't think that as teachers in the English department we don't know anymore what composition is. We've pulled comp into so many parts, then coalesced it together to where now it's gotten so big that we've almost made it obsolete. It may seem like I'm straying off topic, but stay with me...

I find this problem most evident in the "Technical Communicator as Author" piece. The authors state: "Rather than authors producing certain discourses, certain discourses are understood to produce authors" (25). Hmm. I like the use of chiasmus, but I'm dubious as to the truth of their claim. Something about this statement stinks, I just can't put my finger on why exactly. Maybe it's just the bleakness of it. Maybe because I'm not sure how this fits into their argument.
Slack et al, go on to argue that they "...would advance the re-articulation of technical communicators...as having authorial power" (41). Okay. I'm not sure exactly why this is a problem. Is it that the authors want tech communicators to take agency over their work and therefore be accountable for what they produce, or is the argument here that tech communicators aren't given their due? It seems like it's the latter, but I don't know why this is relevant to a tech writing class. Can someone help me on this one?! It's very likely that I'm missing a point. 

So, how this relates to my rant is that I think the goal of teaching tech writing is to increase the rhetorical effectiveness of the writer; to be able to communicate rhetorically in the ways that a business audience will appreciate, and that can lead to change. But articles like this one seem to have the goal of trying to make the comp field even bigger (too much paperwork), rather than getting to the root of the problem. In other words, creating more problems before solving the first set of issues.
 I'm not suggesting that issues of social import aren't relevant to a tech writing course, but what I'm wondering here is-what needs to come first? Before we consider issues like this shouldn't we be more focused on what we're doing in the classroom to prepare students to become effective rhetors, even if they don't think of themselves in that way? And it seems that it would lend itself to the issues that these authors raise when they say, "In a sense, technical communicators need to be shaken from the somnambulistic faith that their work is ethically neutral" (43). That's a heck of a sweeping statement to make! As if they don't already have the knowledge that it isn't ethically neutral and are able to control it. That's where the rhetorical effectiveness comes into play.
The Dilger piece I felt met its goal of the implications of extreme usability. It was bringing the argument back to what the Johnson book had posited, only now the issue has changed from ignoring the user to now ignoring the user under the pretense of being "user-friendly." For example, Dilger gives a list of things that should be included in web-based text, like "paragraphs should contain one idea, using topic sentences and simple sentence structure" (53), all in the name of making the web text "user-friendly." The problem with this way of writing is that it would work for some businesses, but not all.
Moses and Katz's article was interesting to me on a personal level (i.e. it made me think about email and how it was designed with business in mind, and the ways in which the professional world is insidiously taking over the private sphere), but again I wonder, how would one teach this to students? I don't know, maybe social justice issues don't have much of a place within tech and professional writing classes. I can't imagine trying to get a group of students who already look with suspicious eyes on the humanities and try and get them to care about the social, ethical, and economic issues that surround the corporate culture. And even if I did get through, they'd be mighty disappointed once getting into the professional world, set on making changes, only to realize that businesses don't want you to try and change them.
My blog this week may seem really disjointed, and I guess that's because I'm trying to figure this all out. And the more I read, the less I know. Ha!  

Learning Intercultural Communication Competence Linda Beamer

As we all know, the workplace is ever becoming a diverse place, yet there's a lack of multicultural practice within business culture. The thrust of Beamer's article is concerned with creating a paradigm in which to pull from, that explains intercultural communication competence is learned/taught (399). She states: "The best way to understand intercultural communication is to focus on the decoding process and the role of perception in communication" (400).
Decoding is done by the recipient of a message and do to social and cultural ideals, the message may not be clear, that is, the sender may not have the same set of mores as receiver, thus having different signs which obscure meaning for the receiver. Perception, on the other hand, is knowing that a message is being sent. Beamer clarifies this idea with differentiating signifier and the signified: "The signifier...is the sensorially perceived signal without meaning yet attached. The signified is the meaning" (401). To put this into understandable terms: I see a yellow sign on an Idaho highway with the blackened-out image of a goat. I've never seen this image on a sign before because I'm from Nebraska and we have cows, not goats. But I am from the same culture in which the sign was produced, and I have seen similar signs in Nebraska, so I know that I should be on the lookout for wandering goats. I have perceived the sign and was able to decode the message based on previous knowledge and cultural influences.
So, to increase intercultural communication competences requires those making the signs to be constantly aware of what other cultures use, by looking at their "values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors" (402). Beamer introduces The Intercultural Learning Model as a way of demystifying the ways in which professionals can develop intercultural communication. This entails five levels:

• Acknowledging diversity
• Organizing Information by Stereotypes
• Question the Stereotypes
• Analyse Communication Episodes
• Generating "Other Culture" Messages      (404)

This model is both "incremental" and "cyclical" in that it's continually reinventing itself to better fit the needs of the intended audience (404).

The breakdown of the model:
Acknowledging diversity: what it sounds like- to conscientiously realize that there are differences between cultures that could block meaning for the receiver by the sender.

Organizing information by according to stereotypes: Beamer gives the example of Arabs may stand closer to you when they're speaking or that Chinese will refuse hospitality when first offered (406). She acknowledges that stereotypes don't make a culture and that's why the next level is important.

Posing questions to challenge the stereotypes: questioning stereotypes can open up the ways in which a culture may view business-related stuff like: time, technologies used, and how they make decisions (406). To aid in questioning stereotypes, Beamer offers these suggestions:

• Thinking and Knowing: how a culture "acquire, organize, and transmit information" (408)
• Doing and Achieving: as it sounds- what a culture does and how they go about getting it
• The Self: if the culture values individualism or interdependence
• The Organization of society: if there's a strong caste system versus an egalitarian culture 
• The Universe: if a culture looks at the world revolving around humans (humans in the center), or if the world/deities are at the center.

Analyzing communication episodes: once copious amounts of information has been gathered, then the knowledge can be applied by looking at past communication. This is where one can look at what went right, what went wrong, and what was in the middle with regard to effectively communicating signals for a culture.

Generating "other culture" messages: now senders can empathize with a culture's communication style. They can create news signs based on the culture's needs or modify existing models.

Connections:
Thrush article pointing to same issues as Beamer; the workplace is diverse and we need ways of communicating cross-culturally. Thrush is different in that she adds the layer of masculine and feminine. This was missing from Beamer's article- and maybe it should have been because I got the sense that Beamer was thinking about multicultural communication from a masculine perspective, and maybe could have gone to how female perspectives can add complexity to culture.

Fukuoka, et. al.: Complicate Beamer by asking are cultures that different or is it that "assumptions" about what cultures want is what makes the difference. They look at manuals and how many illustrations are in Japanese versus American. And that's where I lose the connection because then their inquiry became more about how these respective cultures liked/didn't like lots of pictures in their manuals.

Breuch: This may be a stretch to pull a connection from "technical literacy" into multicultural communication, but the former does hinge on the latter. Breuch's posit that computers are not "neutral" but rather "political in development and use" (487), which makes me think of Beamer's notion of looking at stereotypes and how a computer could play into that. Would a professional in another culture feel "othered" in some way if she didn't possess the same tech literacy? Or would she feel more included by having that shared knowledge?

Selber et. al.: They make the call to see tech literacy as "a complex set of social practices through which meaning is made collaboratively" (501), drawing on Beamer's Posing Questions to Challenge Stereotypes to make communication inclusive v. exclusive. In other words, the more eyes on the project the better communication will be transmitted.

Questions: While we all see that the workplace is changing in diverse ways, and folks like Beamer have given an explicit way of going about teaching multicultural communication, do you wonder if the real work is in making more people aware, and therefore care, about the changing environment? Are there ways in which teachers could do activities that show the effects of missed communication? Or do teachers go over this stuff, and not push too much of the literary crit way of doing things that Russell and others are concerned about?

You just kinda wasted my precious time (Freedman and Adams), but don't think twice, it's alright

For this week’s reading I will be blogging about Aviva Freedman and Christine Adam’s Learning to Write Professionally: “Situated Learning” and the Transition from University to Professional Discourse.”

The authors are arguing that “[w]hen students move from the university to the workplace, they not only need to learn new genres but they also need to learn new ways to learn those genres” (311). Freedman and Adam define genre as not just reoccurring style in a text, but also how genre is also reinvented by social, cultural, ideological, and political influences (311). They then make the move to dichotomizing the ways in which the university and workplace teach and write.

Universities usually employ the guided participation method. This is the more traditional view of learning where students are given a set of issues to work on and are guided by a professor (mentor) who both supports students’ learning and models how to go about fixing a problem. The idea behind guided participation is that once the student has gained awareness of a genre, then she’ll be able to reproduce as needed what was modeled in class.

The authors then contrast guided participation with Lave and Wenger’s “legitimate peripheral participation (LPP).” Unlike guided participation, the focus of LPP isn’t so much based on learning, but rather apprenticing in real life situations where material production is the concern (312).

How Freedman and Adam’s then assessed these types of learning in the classroom versus the workplace was looking at undergraduates in financial analyst course, and graduate students who were actively interning.

What they found was that the undergrads learned from the professor modeling how to perform tasks, and then carried out their own strategies based on what they had learned in class. The grad students in the workplace had the same element of mentor-learner, and also the method of delivery (i.e. using computers), but now the writing is very different from the university. Rather than having a clearly defined rubric from which to work, the interns needed to figure out what information to include in a document, in what order, and think about for whom they were writing for, which got even trickier when they would be pulled away from an assignment to go work on something completely different.

What I felt was the most particularly interesting difference between university and workplace learning was the notion of “authentic” writing. Students are given situations that are based on actual events and then write about it, whereas the workplace is the actual event. For example, an inter taking meeting notes and has to make sure the information is accurate and easily understandable; if she fails to do this then there is no rewrite: it can hurt her credibility (323).

The authors also make the distinction that in the university, the professor has a more vested interest in students by way of the grade. If students aren’t learning then the professor is failing. In the workplace, however, there may be some evaluations based on work (almost like a grade), but, according to Freedman and Adams, evals are few and far between. Evaluations in the workplace also tend to look at the whole rather than its parts, and that there’s “sparse use of praise and blame” that goes into the eval.

Freedman and Adams conclude that there needs to be more research done on both these types of learning and how they work within their respective places, so then university student-to-workplace employee has better use of different genres.

That is where I stop being nice with this article. The authors may have done extensive research, but it seems to me that they only picked out the places that supported their claim, rather than to actually give something of import to technical writing teachers. They say nothing of how to blur these lines; nothing of how students can and do learn more than just how to write in one genre of professional writing. It’s not like there’s a lot of sonnet writing going into the kinds of writing the workplace does. To say another way: workplace writing is pretty straightforward, and it seems like the authors tried to complicate something that isn’t necessarily all that complicated! I know because I’ve been there.

Freedman and Adams also neglect to go into detail what happens when one is in the workplace, has a so-called mentor, but the mentor is unwilling to pass on what she’s learned. I saw this happen a lot- young blood comes into the office and the seasoned employee is intimidated, thus resistant to helping the new employee. With regard to evaluations: evals are grades, and some companies do give evals quarterly. Often one is not just evaluated based on the whole, but as an individual, unlike what Freedman and Adams claim.

Overall, I felt this piece was written to show the authors’ prowess, rather than giving anything substantial to the tech writing teaching field. It did help me think about the implications of the Russell article I read for last week, that if one only focuses on teaching text-based prose, and doesn’t bring in some of the criticism and how to apply that to texts then students, then they could potentially have trouble navigating the workplace discourse.

Connections: The authors are working from the same place Berkenkotter and Huckin are in that the genre of professional writing has been myopic, and that this can hurt the creditability of the workplace writer. Spinuzzi’s article is also calling for a broader view of the types of writing that takes place in the classroom versus the workplace, which has been a connecting thread so far in most of what we’ve been reading in this class. The only difference is that Freedman and Adams did it less masterfully than some of the other articles I have read.  

Questions: If it’s true that there is dissonance between the university and workplace writing, what do we do to better facilitate the move of students being students to actually being workplace producers of texts?   Should we discuss the political underbelly of the workplace? That is, when an incumbent resists helping the novice? That sometimes workplaces only want their employees to be only so literate to do their jobs, but not to think too much?

Lame course objectives for tech writing class (to be revised)

Objectives that students will be able to do by the end of the semester:
Learn the means of persuasion (ethos, logos, pathos)
Find the medium in which best fits the field (e.g. video, commercial, email)
Different rhetorical tropes and schemes useful in writing
How to offer feedback in meaningful ways
What goes into different genres of writing
Consider other cultures and how that might shape the writing

Russell's argument trajectory

The article I had this week was David R. Russell's "The Ethics of Teaching Ethics in Professional Communication: The Case of Engineering Publicity at MIT in the 1920s"

Russell starts off with two questions: "To what extent, in any, should business and technical writing courses serve the pragmatic needs of business and industry, and to what extent, if any, should those courses teach the concerns of literary studies? And two, What is the responsibility, if any, of the instructor of these courses to teach ethics?" In plain speak, teachers teaching technical writing classes, that come from a lit crit background, want to teach their students ethics from a humanities perspective that doesn't attend to the needs of the students. Humanities teachers don't need to teach ethics because these students already come from backgrounds that have ethically importance (working for the common good), even though it varies from the lit crit way of ethics.

He answers one right off: yes teach ethics, but "how, when, and for what purposes they should be promoted" (167). From there Russell goes into ethos of a profession- "Those values, those rules or conduct...that create and maintain the professional community, that give it its "integrity," its identity" (167). Thus begins Russell taking teachers from a lit crit background that teach tech writing. Russell traces the history of the "two cultures" : lit crit and industry writing. Tech writing is mostly taught by English folks submerged in lit crit- a field of study that has been alienated from other departments because it's seen as unnecessary. Marginalized and feeling undervalued, lit crits banded together; seeing the alienation from other professions as a badge of honor. The consequence of this is that tech writing teachers are coming into the classroom, mostly unknowingly, undermining the ethics of the various disciplines students are in, by trying to humanize them in a lit crit way. The result is that teachers are doing a disservice to the students by pushing their own agendas rather than what is beneficial for the student. I know there's a lot of lit crit, but Russell comes down hard on this particular field of study.

Russell uses the Engineering Publicity at MIT in the 1920s to illustrate how teaching tech writing can be done effectively. It was initially set up as a way for students to learn to show their ethos to government, the public, and employers (177). Used a holistic approach by featuring language, writing, reading, and speaking. Students weren't taught ethics from a humanities POV, but with case studies and how people in the field dealt with the issues. Last, students wrote as engineering professionals in genres like reports or memos rather than a critical analysis paper. The MIT program went through changes (being wildly reductive here): ending up with the same holistic view, only now with professionals, not just teachers, being invited into classrooms to speak on a broad spectrum of topics.

This all leads to Russell stating that it's not the job of a tech writing teacher to impugn the students' discipline, but rather to find out more about the field(s) in which they're teaching, so that when they do make critiques, it's coming from a knowledgeable place and knowing when those times arise (kairos).

Questions:     Is it possible to do this? To remove yourself from your beliefs enough and be willing to lean in to another perspective?

Is there space to teach some aspect of lit crit in a tech writing class?

This piece ties into Miller's article directly. He uses her argument as one of the ways in which tech writing is being approached by a lit crit POV (Ex: "...questions about whose interests a practice serves and how we decide whose interests should be served" (158).

I like Porter's article, because I think it accentuates and complicates Russell's piece. Porter takes a different spin, but like Russell, believes that kairos is important. Different spin in that where Russell was more about learning a lot about different fields, Porter is saying that teachers shouldn't interfere with students' writing, but support as needed (189). I think Russell was remiss in the idea of support.