A Firm Digital Handshake

McCloud's cartoony representation was (for lack of a better word) brilliant. Seeing the icon displayed in its many facets was intriguing. I specifically liked his representation of objects becoming a part of ourselves. “The vehicle becomes an extension of our body. It absorbs our sense of identity. We become the car” (McCloud 38). The idea of an object melding into our body seems like a strange science fiction movie; however, the more I see cell phones plastered to people’s foreheads and hands, the more I begin to understand what McCloud is saying. Interesting enough, my hand connection with the laptop also forms this symbiotic relationship. My hands make a physical connection with the computer, but I also have to make a personal connection with the machine. In many ways this computer will absorb my identity; it can form a digital identity of myself; it can be customized to iconically represent the identity I have with myself; it can also display my dialogue identity—this writing specifically. First, however, the computer and I must congeal into one. 

This begins almost immediately when you access your computer. If this machine is newly purchased, you will first enter your computer name, your log-on name, and your password. Although these features have a practical use, such as anti-theft, their main function might be the initial connection to engage the user and the machine into their symbiotic relationship. The relationship using this digital handshake can be accomplished on a foreign machine with the same results. For example, when we enter our classroom and sit at one of the classroom computers it is not ours (we do not own it), but once we log-on using our student network identification the computer becomes us; we own it. We can mark the save my password box on the internet and download pictures to your computers with some kind of privacy. However, the feel at a public computer seems a little different. If you check the box to remember your login and password and leave the computer someone can access your private domain. Any picture you save to the computer can be dissected by anyone. I personally feel a disconnect towards public computers. Could it be that the symbiotic handshake wasn’t initiated? Or, even worse, that someone else did it and we are trespassing into their domain? To properly apply our computer identity we have to be in a comfortable place—our own domain.

The computer is an integral connection to developing a digital identity. A cell phone can accomplish this identity, but the computer is more intricately intertwined in the process. Specifically I would like to point out such entities as Facebook and Twitter. These sites further draw my identity connection with a computer. My life can be displayed in the past, present, and (a possible) future linear timeline; It also allows me to view other people’s lives in the same manner. The intimate connection with my life and others is only attained through a machine to display it. Thus I make the machine part of myself (giving it purpose/identity) and it displays my digital identity (and others identities) for me—completing the symbiotic circle.

Jakobs is a joke

As I waded through Jakobs “The Evolution of Web-Site Genres,” I couldn’t help but think that she needs writing lessons and counseling on her racist tones. I will propose two quick sentences of her writing for review. The first seems blatantly confusing and ungrammatical. This is how Jakobs puts it, “These modifications can here be only briefly examined using the example of an online insurance site” (Jakobs 363). Ironically, this terrible sounding sentence is also a segway into her racial undertones.


Now I may be completely off-base here but I would like to also offer as evidence sentence two. “An example may suffice. Germans are said to avoid risks; in contrast to Americans, they seek to counter risk-filled situations in life by taking insurance policies” (364). Jakobs’ “example” only sufficed in discrediting her point to me. I will not pull this card very often, but, as you noticed, this blog’s title also includes ridicule; although the main theme of the blog is to analyze and study theory, sometimes it is important to criticize texts. After all, we can’t go around believing everything we hear. I would like to investigate how a few ill constructed sentences and questionably slanted views can discredit a source. I will admit that I didn’t find anything particularly interesting in the beginning of this text. Eventually I started to pick up on the subtle sentence faults. Here is another sentence that stood out to me, “web-site users expect typically solutions and orient their behavior and value judgments to familiar patterns” (366). I believe the word she wished to use was typical. Either this person’s work was translated from a different language or Jakobs has a terrible editor. I submit this example of ridicule to the discourse community of writers. How can we possible take this theory text seriously, when it distracts and makes condescending remarks? I believe it is fair to say that Americans also have insurance. Do Germans take less risk than Americans? Not in the late 1930s to the early 1940s.


The real problem with Jakobs’ claims is that they are not cited. In fact another passage appears that seems to be pure conjecture, “this would explain why Chinese portals seem to be designed according to the maxim ‘as much as possible all at once’ and hence appear to Western eyes as cluttered and confused” (365). Jakobs did get one thing right, I am confused; however, it is not from the “Chinese portal” but from her rash generalization of “Westerners” without any research or cited material to back up her argument. I hope at this point everyone else is as turned off to her style as I am. The question that keeps reoccurring is: if Jakobs is willing to make unsubstantiated claims in parts of her text, how are we supposed to take her argument seriously? Since Jakobs graciously offered the Germans as an example, I will do the same by offering a video that represents my frustrations with her grammar using Hitler. I would also like to show how painful it was to read Jakobs’ text by showing an equally painful event—an ungrammatical break-up.

All Mind!!!

In Walter R. Fisher’s “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument” an interesting question is raised about the use of argument and its interaction with humans. Fisher introduces the idea of the Communication Paradigm. This first takes Aristotle’s Organon that builds the “Rational World Paradigm” (The basic idea that Argument is what makes us human) and begins to deconstruct the RWP and construct his Communication Paradigm around it (Fisher 378). The idea was that humans used a personal narrative (not an argumentative base) to conduct their daily lives— including arguments—whether they be scientific, political, or social exchanges. But, where Fisher’s argument was to lead next blindsided (and enlightened) me.

Fisher shatters the oppressive walls of hierarchy using this paradigm to state, “In theme, if not in every detail, narrative, then, is meaningful to for persons in particular and in general, across communities as well as cultures, across time and space” (Fisher 384). A stunning statement that leads me to my definition of what writing is (writing being all forms of communication whether implicit or explicit). A stream of human consciousness that has been removed from the linear time table. The collective conscious is happening at all times in all space. A pretty bold statement to claim. However, if we analyze Dell Hymes who says, “the narrative use of language is not a property of subordinate cultures, whether folk, or working class, or the like, but universal function” (Fisher 384). And include what Gregory Bateson who says, “then thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds” (Fisher 384). We can see that the human consciousness is in fact a collection of narratives (stories) that have been passed or are inherent to the human mind by an extensive and exhausting research of mythology: its similarities, its subconscious travel through humans (attachments such as daily rituals), its existence in symbol form (writing, which stands outside of time to tell the story through millennias), and spirituals implications.

Interability is the concept that traces of writing continue to reappear through time, according to James Porter’s “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” However, considering our last statement, we can see that interability might exist in more than writing by bland definition. It may be found in a narrative that stretches through all of humans’ existence. In Karen Armstrong’s “A Short History of Myth” she traces (through hypothesis) the inherent need for humans to look to the sky when praying or speaking to the ethereal. She believes that it begun with the first humans realizing the physical separation of us from the sky. It quickly led to mean a celestial (or holy) place which we cannot attain. Even though, in our current time, we have proven through exploration that this is not the case, we still look to the skies when praying or asking something of the world we do not understand. It can thus be concluded that through our stream of human consciousness, interability, exists in more than writing (the bland version) but also in our subconscious discourse  and all forms of the narrative paradigm that make up the “all mind” human consciousness.    

In an after thought I am unhappy with my definition of writing (human consciousness)  existing in all time in all space. I realized that I didn't explain or even consider the future from our perceived place in time; and how the future could possible be included in the current human consciousness (including primal humans) if that narrative hasn't been said yet. However, I had an epiphany this morning involving intertextuality. On the same lines of looking toward the sky, narratives that we include into the stream of human consciousness (of here and now) will ultimately influence, through intertextuality, the future human narrative. Thus, I would consider the future human narrative existing in our present as well as the beginning of humans through intertextuality of consciousness.    

Hello me! It's me again!

 

An intro into insanity 

Theory Query...

The rhetorical situation exists in everything. Or does it? Fish speaks in "Rhetoric" of the foundationalist who believed that rhetoric’s were the devil; in that, to approach anything with a skewed and molded sense of it was an act of deception and power mongering. Fish, of course, assumes the very essence of Beelzebub by writing on the issue as a rhetorician. He establishes his position by slyly showing the holes in the opposition’s viewpoints through rhetoric. To say the least: Fish is an asshole. However, he does establish a good point: it is the rhetor who has the power.

            Indeed, it is the rhetorician who can persuade people to what the “truth” is. It is, however, not without great effort. Grant-Davie’s “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents” discuss in detail how the “rhetorical situation” occurs; how the rhetors and the audience interact; how it is restricted (or expounded) by constraints; and how to identify and use the exigency, as well as everything else, to our advantage. They go on to say, “[R]hetors who can define the fundamental issues represented by a superficial subject matter—and persuade audiences to engage those issues—is in a position to maintain decisive control over the field of debate” (Grant-Davie 267). Thanks! World domination will be so much easier now.

            The wrench in the gears develops when observing a rhetorical situation as a rhetorician. Grant-Davie only slightly touch on this subject, using the metaphor of reading a charity pamphlet asking for donations as a rhetorician. I see this as the ultimate obstacle for any rhetor. How do you persuade a fellow rhetor into thinking he is not being persuaded but in fact do just that? We can notice this in Fish as he considers the serious man’s (foundationalist) side of the argument only to absolute decimate it. He does this by making a serious man inadvertently discover that he is in fact a rhetorician (just a shitty one) and converts him to the dark side. Fish would have made a much better Darth Vader.

            It is, however, very important to realize the sequence upon which rhetoricians attempts to persuade his or her audience. For example, I first read Fish’s view on the rhetorical man versus the serious man and was lead to the conclusion (by Fish) that the rhetors hold the power. With this new found knowledge, I read Grant-Davie’s piece and discovered that I too can harness this power and even read as a rhetorician! This ultimately brought me to the longest read: Giesler’s “IText.”  It was to my utter joy that I discovered in only the second paragraph this sentence: “This article is a call to those who share our sense of urgency and opportunity” (Geisler 3). Excellent! I have identified, as a rhetorician, Geisler’s audience and am not one of her constituents. So I stopped reading.

            In conclusion, thank you Grant-Davie. Fish: you’re still an asshole.