Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Aaron A. Toscano, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • Critical Theory/MRG 2023 Presentation
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • SEACS 2022 Presentation
    • SEACS 2023 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • April 10th: Analyzing Ethics
      • Ethical Dilemmas for Homework
      • Ethical Dilemmas to Ponder
      • Mapping Our Personal Ethics
    • April 12th: Writing Ethically
    • April 17th: Ethics Continued
    • April 19th: More on Ethics in Writing and Professional Contexts
    • April 24th: Mastering Oral Presentations
    • April 3rd: Research Fun
    • April 5th: More Research Fun
      • Epistemology and Other Fun Research Ideas
      • Research
    • February 13th: Introduction to User Design
    • February 15th: Instructions for Users
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters More Effective
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • February 20th: The Rhetoric of Technology
    • February 22nd: Social Constructions of Technology
    • February 6th: Plain Language
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
    • March 13th: Introduction to Information Design
    • March 15th: More on Information Design
    • March 20th: Reporting Technical Information
    • March 27th: The Great I, Robot Analysis
    • May 1st: Final Portfolio Requirements
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 23rd: Introduction to the Class
    • August 30th: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2023)
    • September 13th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 27th: Coordination and Subordination
      • Parallelism
    • September 6th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • April 11th: McCarthyism Part 1
    • April 18th: McCarthyism Part 2
    • April 25th: The Satanic Panic
    • April 4th: Suspense/Horror/Fear in Film
    • February 14th: Fascism and Other Valentine’s Day Atrocities
    • February 21st: Fascism Part 2
    • February 7th: Fallacies Part 3 and American Politics Part 2
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
    • March 28th: Nineteen Eighty-Four
    • March 7th: Fascism Part 3
    • May 2nd: The Satanic Panic Part II
      • Rhetoric of Fear and Job Losses
  • Intercultural Communication on the Amalfi Coast
    • Pedagogical Theory for Study Abroad
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction and American Culture
    • Assignments for Science Fiction and American Culture
    • August 21: Introduction to to “Science Fiction and American Culture”
    • August 23: More Introduction
    • August 28: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • August 30th: Robots and Zombies
    • September 11th: William Gibson, Part I
    • September 13th: William Gibson, Part II
    • September 18: The Matrix (1999)
    • September 20: Hackers (1995)
    • September 25: Firefly and Black Mirror
    • September 27th: All Systems Red
    • September 6th: Alien Other and Worlds Beyond
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • How to Lie with Statistics
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication » March 27th: The Great I, Robot Analysis

March 27th: The Great I, Robot Analysis

Plan for the Week

This page will direct you to all the I, Robot material. If this were a face-to-face class, we’d easily spend 2-3 days discussing the novel. Below I have a review of postmodernism, which might help you think about literature from a cultural perspective, a description of a study I did on teaching I, Robot, and, very importantly, a link to I, Robot topics for your future essays that are due March 31st (I decided to extend the deadline)

  • Postmodernism, An Introduction
  • I, Robot Study
  • I, Robot Discussion
  • I, Robot Essay Topics
  • Weekly Discussion Post #11 is due on Canvas by 11:00 pm

By the way, I’ll be teaching ENGL 3050 “Science Fiction and American Culture” this Fall 2023, so, if you like sci fi (books, films, TV shows, video games), you might be interested in the course.

Postmodern Introduction

This postmodernism discussion is for those of you more humanities-oriented students who will encounter literature in your future courses. However, I want all of you to be able to recognize personal and socially accepted ways of knowing. Ways of knowing or, more accurately, ways of arguing often get supported by the following:

  1. Tastes and convictions
  2. Opinions
  3. Theories/Laws
  4. Facts

Truth is often defined as facts, so the above list is ranked from more personal knowledge (1) to most socially accepted knowledge (4).

Where might “statistics” go? When we cover ethics, we’ll see that statistics (or “the facts,” generally) never speak for themselves.

I, Robot Study

I did a study on I, Robot essays I acquired from students over a few years. As I’ve mentioned before in class, my approach to Technical Communication is not standard, so trying to pitch science fiction to the gatekeepers at the technical communication journals is difficult. Fortunately, the forward-thinker reviewers and editors at Computers and Composition found my article worthy to be published.

Below is an excerpt from the article that presents the goals I have for incorporating I, Robot into the technical communication course:

My goal for using Isaac Asimov’s novel I, Robot is to move students toward being aware that there are sub(altern) discourses about technologies—and not just computers. These discourses do not consider technology inherently progressive or essentially good. The novel’s setup fits in well with technical writing courses because, although it is 60 years old, it analyzes high-tech culture. Readers understand it as fiction, but they can be moved to read the novel’s subtext, which illuminates the ideologies carried out through the dominant culture’s beliefs and discourses about technology. When we adhere to strictly instrumentalist activities and lessons without critical analysis of the technical communicator-audience relationship, we may miss a major opportunity to engage our student population, a group that most likely—coming from engineering and sciences—has an uncritical view of technology: The mantra “bigger/smaller, faster, stronger, better” is not always accurate. In fact, it promotes a modernist paradigm for technical writing. Such a paradigm privileges the technologies over the communicators, much like system-centered design suggests that “the documentation is written to reflect the image of the system designer” (Johnson, 1998/2003, p. 295). Incorporating I, Robot into the technical writing classroom advances a postmodern pedagogy that privileges student agency and asks students to be critical of their own career goals when exploring the wider cultural forces that may shape their decisions and the products that their cultures produce.

Toscano, Aaron A. (2011). Using I, Robot in the technical writing classroom: Developing a critical technological awareness. Computers and Composition 28(1), 14-27. [cited in APA format…I think]

Visuals to Help

Below I have a few images to get us thinking:

  • Cover of I, Robot from the early 1980s
    • Related cover
    • Related French cover
  • Back cover of I, Robot from the early 1980s
  • Three Laws of Robotics (pdf)

Here is the list of topics for your short essays.

Asimov Links to Wikipedia

  • Isaac Asimov
  • I, Robot Cover
    • Bigger image
  • I, Robot Cover–“Runaround”
    • Bigger image
  • I, Robot Cover–“Reason”

I, Robot Discussion

In order to guide your thinking, consider the following issues related to technology studies and, of course, technical communication:

  1. Critical Technological Awareness
    -or-
    Critical Workplace Awareness
  2. Robot Marketing
  3. Labor Issues Surrounding Robots
  4. QT: the Existential Robot
  5. Redhead Stereotypes
  6. The Precarious Situation of Having a Love Interest on the Job
    -or-
    Women in Engineering and Science (see ADVANCE)*
  7. Scientific and Technological Races
  8. Government Support of Technology and War
  9. Corporate Chicanery
  10. The Fallacy of Machine Predictability
  11. Robots vs. Humans

Future Work

Your I, Robot essays are now due Friday, 3/31, so turn them in on Canvas. Remember, I’ve read this book many times, and I do not need summaries! Do not summarize the plot; instead, make an argument or insight into how the novel reflects contemporary life regarding technological issues–good or bad.

Also, don’t forget your Weekly Discussion Post #11 is due Thursday, 3/30, 11:00 pm.

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