Public Rhetoric and Practical CommunicationHow Are Form and Content Related?

Lecture 4: CAT 125Elizabeth Losh

http://losh.ucsd.edu

Langdon Winner on “Mythinformation”

“Taken as a whole, beliefs of this kind constitute what I would call mythinformation: the almost religious conviction that a widespread adoption of computers and communications systems along with easy access to electronic information will automatically produce a better world for human living.” (NMR 592)

“information=knowledge=power=democracy” (NMR 595)

Wikiality and Tripling Elephant Population

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/72347/july-31-2006/the-word---wikiality

Colbert’s Rhetoric

TruthinessIn satire, truthiness is a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

WikialityReality as decided on by majority rule.

“Bringing democracy to knowledge”Use of the rhetoric of news graphicshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI8_DDEuswk

Virgil Griffith, WikiScanner, and “Self-Determination”

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/183247/august-21-2007/the-word---self-determination

“Of all the computer enthusiasts’ political ideas, there is none more poignant than the faith that the computer is destined to become a potent equalizer in modern society. Support for this belief is found in the fact that small ‘personal’ computers are becoming more and more powerful, less and less expensive, and ever more simple to use . . . Using a personal computer makes one no more powerful vis-à-vis, say, the National Security Agency than flying a hang glider establishes a person as a match for the U.S. Air Force.”

- Langdon Winner, NMR 595

Epistemological Hierarchies

Information in the Ancient World The information culture of the Roman world was exploding with new

libraries and modes for disseminating written texts, maps, scientific illustrations, art works, and luxury goods

Etymology of “Information”“The term itself traces back to the Latin verb informare, which for the Romans generally meant ‘to shape,’ ‘to form an idea of,’ or ‘to describe.’ The verb, in turn, supplied action to the substantive, forma, which took varied, cognate meanings that depended mostly on context. The historian Livy used forma as a general term for ‘character,’ ‘form,’ ‘nature,’ ‘kind,’ and ‘matter.’ Horace applied it to a shoelast, Ovid to a mold or stamp for making coins, while the wily Cicero, among other uses, extended it to logic as ‘form’ or ‘species,’ his rendering of the Greek. . . . The practical notion of ‘form’ as a last, mold, or stamp remained closely tied to its more abstract, logical meaning, which paired content and container.”

Michael Hobart and Zachary Schiffman, Information Ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution

What informational structures will you bring to your blog?

• Chronology• Links to primary sources and commentary• Photographs and information graphics• Tags• A Blogroll

http://losh.ucsd.edu/courses/example_blogs.html

Is everything really self-determinedA Word on Reflection

Reflection is not just about “personal reflection”

The Rhetoric of Governments, Universities, Corporations, Churches, and Organizations

We all serve as spokespeople

Beginning a book with reflectionOne day, in 1988, the computers and modems suddenly appeared, as if by magic. They were second-hand Apple IIe terminals, but in my mind it was a miracle to have them at all. At the time, I was fresh out of college and running a chronically underfunded after-school program at a delinquency prevention center under the auspices of the California Youth Authority.

Ending a book with reflection

Reflection Does Not Need to Be

• About the distant past• A negative appraisal

Edward Tufte

Visual Explanations

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

“These costs result from the cognitive style characteristic of the standard default PP presentation: foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, a deeply hierarchical single-path structure as the model for organizing every type of content, breaking up narrative and data into slides and minimal fragments, rapid temporal sequencing of thin information rather than focused spatial analysis, conspicuous decoration and Phluff, a preoccupation with formal not content, an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.” (4)

Chart Junk in the Shuttle Disaster

Colin Powell’s Evidence Presented to the United Nations

Strategic Thinking and PowerPoint

http://lay-uh.ytmnd.com/

Does PowerPoint Oversimplify?

Professor Oreskes point about editability

The Lincoln PowerPoint

http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm

Default Templates

The Yes Men

http://theyesmenfixtheworld.com/trailer_hd.htm

PowerPoint as a Lecturing Tool

Jill Bolte Taylorhttp://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

Bolte Taylor’s Rhetoric of Personal and Professional Expertise

• “I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia”

• Speaking “as a sister and later as a scientist”• Family photo “I can make my dreams come true”• Lab of Dr. Francine Benes at Harvard Dept. of Psychiatry• Question about biological differences: research question • Mapping microcircuitry• Advocate for NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness• Morning of December 10, 1996• Medical scan of hemorrhage• Show and tell moment with human brain

Bolte Taylor’s Rhetoric of Disempowerment

• “I could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall”• “An infant in a woman’s body”• Humor of personifying right and left brains• Humor of how language sounds to her• A long tradition of “captivity narratives” and

“conversion narratives”

Bolte Taylor’s Rhetoric of Empowerment

• Peace of choosing to leaving left hemispheres• Who are we? The “lifeforce power of the

universe”• Power to choose how and who we want to be

in the world – the “we inside of me”• Rhetorical questions: Which would you

choose? Which do you choose? And when?

Testimony vs. Evidence

A Thesis from Lecture Three

Although TED talks seem to represent a new form of what Henry Jenkins has called “spreadable media,” the most popular online videos are often those with conventional messages that follow traditional narrative structures. For example, the TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor borrows from much older popular American rhetorics of captivity and conversion.”

Ideas worth spreading

Spreadable Media not Viral Media

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

Going shorter

The pecha kucha formathttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZOt6BkhUgAssociated with architects, designers, game

designers, etc.Image driven not text driven

The Status Update Format

Going even shorter to 40 characters

An Experiment for Class

Sign up for Twitter before January 25Enable its mobile functionalityBring your mobile device to class on January 25Use the #cat125 hashtag for the first twenty minutes of

class, while we are viewing the disability videos and learning about Joseph Weizenbaum’s argument about computers

Think about decorumTurn off your mobile device while I introduce professor

Humphries

For Next Time

Thinking about Old Media and New Media with Vannevar Bush and Lev Manovich