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

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • 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
  • 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 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: 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
    • 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
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • 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 in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • 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
LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127 » October 9th: Approaching Autonomous

October 9th: Approaching Autonomous

As I’ve stated many times before, there’s no single correct approach to interpret a novel (or any text). Unlike our shorter readings, this novel will require some broader background understanding. Below I have a list of Major Themes from the novel that we will cover over. We should be able to get through them all by next week. Instead of going straight to passages, I’m going to assume you’ve read (or will be finished by next Wednesday, 10/16), so I’ll try to not pull out as many direct quotations and rely on our remembering key parts of the plot. For our purposes, we’ll consider these two time periods:

Jack’s past (2114-2120) and Jack’s present (2144-2145)

What could be the major change in Jack’s worldview from her early 20s to late 40s?

Major Themes

  • Autonomy/Indentured Servitude
  • Academia vs Industry
  • Globalization
  • Capitalism
  • Intellectual Property
  • Politics of Medicine
  • Gender and Sexuality
    • Uncanny Valley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
    • Check out Erica
    • How about Sophia
    • Faces of monkeys and other primates
  • Maybe some discussion on a specific comic book trope
  • Showing vs Telling in prose

About the Author

Annalee Newitz is an American journalist who has a Ph.D. in English and American Studies from UC Berkeley. Not surprisingly, she writes quite a bit about technology—fiction and nonfiction. Here’s a link to her website (specifically her io9 stuff): Annalee Newitz.

Main Characters

  • Jack (Judith Chen): Our pirate protagonist.
  • Threezed: Former indentured 19-year old who becomes a sidekick (of a kind) to Jack.
  • Eliasz: IPC (Intellectual Property Coalition) agent ruthlessly out to rid the world of pirates.
  • Paladin: Robot IPC agent and Eliasz’s indentured partner.
  • Krish: Runs Free Lab, a lab searching for alternatives to profit-motivated drugs, at the University of Saskatoon, which is most likely modeled after current-day University of Saskatewan.
  • Med (Medea): Autonomous robot physician whose patients are affected by Zacuity.
    Frankie: Paranoid pirate, living in Casablanca, programs/develops her drugs using Adder.
  • Lyle: Former Free Lab activist and Jack’s former lover.
  • Fang: Human Resources robot that works for the African Federation and gives Paladin robot-to-robot advice.
  • Bug: Autonomous mosquito bot historian (PhD from University of British Columbia) at the Aberdeen Centre in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada (south of Vancouver) whose demeanor reminds me of a UNC Charlotte Global and International Areas Studies professor.

Autonomy/Indentured Servitude

Obviously, this is the main theme of the book—what does it mean to be autonomous? Paladin comes out and tells us what “they” think about the “key” to autonomy at the end (I realize there’s more ambiguity with Paladin, but I’ll use “they” as their main pronoun for now). We need to complicate autonomy and critically analyze the text for possible interpretations. The inside jacket cover of my copy asks, “When anything can be owned, how can we be free?” Perhaps we should start there, but I need to provide some cultural studies/sociological discussion first.

Structuration Theory

Mark Fisher claims that “Control only works if you are complicit with it” (22). I like to consider Anthony Giddens theory of structuration when I think of Fisher’s argument. Structuration theory proposes that humans operate under a pre-existing social structure, which controls actions. Citizens abide by and reproduce the overall structure, but this means they consent to the agents of social control that govern them. Consider the following quotations from Giddens:

  • “social structures are both constituted by human agency, and yet at the same time are the very medium of this constitution” (121).
  • “To examine the structuration of a social system is to examine the modes whereby that system, through the application of generative rules and resources is produced and reproduced in social interaction. Social systems, which are systems of social interaction, are not structures, although they necessarily have structures. There is no structure, in human social life, apart from the continuity of processes of structuration.” (Studies in Social and Political Theory 118)

Reflecting and advocating Giddens’s theory, James W. Messerschmidt summarizes that “structure both constrains and enables social action” (p. 77). I’ve mentioned that media reproduce ideology, normalizing it. Well, it was already normalized, but it’s impossible to determine whether or not the media (broadly) developed the ideology first or reflected the ideology. We don’t need to worry about a starting point, however, because we can identify instances where culture mediates rules, norms, repetitive behaviors, etc., we can claim that our actions are not solely individually motivated. We reproduce and justify the social system by operating within it.

Giddens theory hasn’t been debunked and, although there are criticisms of his initial theory, there are many expansions of his theory. Structuration theory is a useful interpretive lens for cultural studies because it allows us to focus on agent and rules. Simply put, our actions create our world; our interactions maintain or recreate the world.* Why do we agents follow rules? Why are there rules? In view of Autonomous, do programmed robots have any agency, or do they just respond to rules (their code—coding, program language)?
*Let’s hold off from discussing actions create our realities or worldviews…we’ll complicate this later.

Questions for Autonomous

  • In what ways do the characters try to break the rules of society (really big Pharma)?
  • What was the conflict for Jack that made her leave academia?
  • How is Threezed the epitome of the agentless citizen even though he has his own blog?
  • What appears to constrain Eliasz’s desires (at first) for Paladin?

Social Construction of Technology vs Technological Determinism

In light of structuration theory, this is a false dichotomy because it doesn’t allow for a spectrum of flexibility. We can point to prevailing ideologies that appear to “demand” a particular technology, but we can’t ignore that individuals and groups use technologies in ways developers did not intend them to be used. It would be a serious contradiction to claim EVERY interpretation of technology must focus on “social construction,” then, claim textual interpretation has a plethora of ways to be interpreted, including reader response. After all, readers interpret the meanings of texts based on their own experiences. While I focus most of my attention on the social construction of technology and also texts, I certainly do not consider these the ONLY ways to interpret technologies and texts. Social construction, however, is a very useful idea to have when beginning to critically analyze texts and technologies and, of course, our texts about technologies—Science Fiction!

  • p.31: “Families would sometimes sell their toddlers to indenture schools, where managers trained them to be submissive just like they were programming a bot. At least bots could earn their way out of ownership after a while, be upgraded, and go fully autonomous. Humans might earn their way out, but there was no autonomy key that could undo a childhood like that.”
  • p. 35: “[Paladin’s] service could last no more than ten years, a period deemed more than enough time to make the Federation’s investment in creating a new life-form worthwhile.”
  • p. 36: “[H]umans should not be owned like bots because nobody paid to make them. Bots, who cost money, required a period of indenture to make their manufacture worthwhile….the vast majority of cities and economic zones had some system of human indenture. And Vegas was where the humans sold themselves.”

Academia vs Industry

Is academia (the academy, the university, the ivory tower, etc.) the real world? As students, we often think about school life as different from “the real world,” which usually means our careers. That is a traditional view of university life, one that makes more sense in the context of a non-commuter school. But even among professors, who make the university their career, we often separate academia from “the real world.” Doing so implies there’s something artificial about this place. Well, this is an artificial place, but very real actors operate within this institution and get real credentials from it. These credentials are a type of currency legitimizing the graduate as a potentially good employee for a job. The thing to remember is that people make up this system and legitimize it: Students enroll, professors teach (and research and serve on damn committees…), staff coordinate bureaucratic needs, administrators do something, and we all interact within this community. Yes, it is very real (and surreal at times).

The novel reproduces the academia-vs-industry “dilemma” mainly through Jack’s and Krish’s paths. Jack becomes disillusioned by the conservatism of academia, but Krish drops his “radical” past and becomes a member of the academy, who runs a lab by securing all that grant money. As I’ve mentioned before, don’t be fooled by the media soundbites claiming universities are full of liberal professors. The University is a gatekeeping institution, entrenched in society like laws, government, religion, etc. You might be able to point to professors with liberal views, but this is a conservative place with change happening slowly.

Questions for Autonomous

  • Why did Jack want to be an academic?
  • What motivated Med to enter academia?
  • What did Bug ask Actin—Bobby Broner’s indentured, disembodied bot—regarding his desire to get his degree? (A very hilarious part, btw)

Next Class

You’ll be in Fretwell 402 on Friday (10/11) with Ms. Rogers for some Autonomous discussions. Please review the notes I have up for next week. They will help understand how meaning is created in the text.

Skip to toolbar
  • Log In