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
    • SEACS 2022 Presentation
    • SEACS 2023 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • 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
  • 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
    • 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 7th: Fascism Part 3
  • 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
    • 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
New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021) » March 30th: Hyperreality

March 30th: Hyperreality

Some definitions to get us motivated:

  • simulacrum: the replication (upon replication) of a subject without being able to find the concrete beginning.
  • hyperreality: the idea often associated with a viewer (an audience in general) believing the media-generated simulation is real or more real than an actual event, personality, condition, or, ultimately, an experience.
  • Lev Manovich’s definition of new media:
    1. “All new media objects, whether they are created from scratch on computers or converted from analog media sources, are composed of digital code; they are numerical representations” (p. 27).
    2. Modularity: “a new media object consists from independent parts which, in their turn, consist from smaller independent parts, and so on, up to the level of smallest “atoms” such as pixels, 3D points or characters” (p. 31).
    3. Automation: the above two principles “allow for the automation of many operations involved in media creation, manipulation and access” (p. 32).
    4. Variability: “A new media object is not something fixed once and for all but can exist in different, potentially infinite, versions….Instead of identical copies a new media object typically gives rise to many different versions” (p. 36).
    5. Transcoding: “In new media lingo, to “transcode” something is to translate it into another format. The computerization of culture gradually accomplishes similar transcoding in relation to all cultural categories and concepts. That is, cultural categories and concepts are substituted, on the level of meaning and/or the language, by new ones which derive from computer’s ontology, epistemology and pragmatics” (p. 47).

Introduction to Video Games and American Culture

Over fifty years ago, Umberto Eco published a modern de Tocqueville-esque analysis of the American obsession with the fake. At that time, video games had not yet become ubiquitous household technologies, but they had already flooded arcades in shopping malls across the country. Umberto Eco—in a way similar to Jean Baudrillard’s work on simulation—claims that Americans desire not the real but the hyperreal, commodities more real than the actual product, service, or experience. (p. 1)

I was quite happy with myself for “…a modern de Tocqueville-esque analysis…”

Eco’s “Travels in Hyperreality”

Lots of discussion of American entertainment. Our obsession for the fake is quite apparent to Eco. Let’s have a general discussion on this piece.

Some Key passages for further discussion:

  • p. 3: “Holography…achieves a full-color photographic representation that is more than three-dimensional.”
  • p. 4: “America, a country obsessed with realism, where, if a reconstruction is to be credible, it must be absolutely iconic, a perfect likeness, a ‘real’ copy of the reality being represented.”
  • Commenting on wax museums:
    • p. 7: “The Lyndon B. Johnson Library is a true Fortress of Solitude….suggest[ing] that there is a constant in the average American imagination and taste for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy.”
    • p. 7: “The aim of the reconstructed Oval Office is to supply a ‘sign’ that will then be forgotten as such. The sign aims to be the thing, to abolish the distinction of the reference, the mechanism of replacement.”
    • LBJ’s Oval Office Recreation
  • p. 7: “two typical slogans that pervade American advertising….’the real thing’…’more.'”
  • p. 8: “leaving a surplus to throw away–that’s prosperity.”
  • p. 8: “this journey into hyperreality…demands the real and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake.”
  • pp. 9-10: “the ravenous consumption of the present and about the constant “past-izing” process carried out by American civilization in its alternate process of futuristic planning an nostalgic remorse.”
  • p. 11: “As in some story by Heinlein or Asimov, you have the impression of entering and leaving time in a spatial-temporal haze where centuries are confused.”
    • Even animals are fake if artificially selected…but that chicken is real, right?
  • p. 12: “The whole of the United States is spangled with wax museums, advertised in every hotel.”
    • These attractions “are loud and aggressive, they assail you with big billboards on the freeway miles in advance.”
  • pp. 13-14: “Another characteristic of the wax museum is that the notion of historical reality is absolutely democratized: Marie Antoinette’s boudoir is recreated with fastidious attention to detail, but Alice’s encounter with the Mad Hatter is done just as carefully.”
  • p. 15: “The idea that the philosophy of hyperrealism guides the reconstructions is again prompted by the importance attached to the ‘most realistic statue in the world.'”
    • Is there a parallel here to a person who always claims he has “the best, most beauty, greatest–better than Obama–wonderful” policies?
  • p. 19: “the visitor is convinced that the Palace [of Living Arts in LA] itself replaces and improves on the National Gallery or the Prado” (emphasis added).
  • p. 23: On the artifacts in Hearst Castle, “The striking aspect of the whole is not…the artificial tissue seamlessly connect[ing] fake and genuine, but rather the sense of fullness, the obsessive determination not to leave a single space that doesn’t suggest something.”
    • horror vacui
  • p. 25: “The Madonna Inn is the poor man’s Hearst Castle….It says to visitors: ‘You can have the incredible, just like a millionaire.”
  • Think South of the Border on I-95
    • Yes, Las Vegas also does this.
  • pp. 36-37: “It is the ideology of preservation, in the New World, of the treasures that the folly and negligence of the Old World are causing to disappear into the void. Naturally this ideology conceals something…”
  • p. 37: “once the fetishistic desire for the original is forgotten, these copies are perfect. And at this point isn’t the enemy of the rights of art the engraver who defaces the place to keep low the number of prints.”
  • pp. 41-42: “the customer finds himself participating in the fantasy because of his own au­thenticity as a consumer; in other words, he is in the role of the cowboy or the gold-prospector who comes into town to be fleeced of all he has accumulated while out in the wilds.

Ch. 10 “Television, Texts, and Audiences”

Regardless of how much we (you…)claim you don’t watch television, I find it impossible that you don’t have an opinion on some program. We can start with some news-oriented discussions, but I’m curious about how you consume TV (or stream shows on one of your various screens). This reminds me of a story about my ‘fellow’ PhD cohort and their feigning a single-minded devotion to their studies.

  • p. 402: “…watching TV is a passive experience…”
  • p. 403 “Television needs to be understood in terms of…patterns of cultural meaning.”
  • p. 403: “The production of news holds a strategic position in debates about television for its presumed, and often feared, influence on public life.”
    • p. 404: “The selection of items for inclusion as news and the specific ways in which a story is constructed are never neutral or objective.”
    • This doesn’t mean all news is inherently fake or lies.
    • Even these different headlines don’t suggest the WSJ is lying…
  • p. 405: “Facts, objectivity, and the public sphere belong to the men” in newsrooms.
  • p. 406: The echo chamber–“Audiences…choose to buy or watch that which they already agree with.”
  • p. 407: “Within a hegemonic model, ideological processes….are an outcome of the routine attitudes and working practices of staff.”
    • “Primary definers are taken to be politicians, judges, industrialists, the police, and so forth; that is, official agencies involved in the making of news events.”
  • p. 408: On The Gulf War(s)…both of them–“Televisions was deficient in providing an adequate explanation for the war”
    • Those of you who remember the coverage of the First Gulf War, what were your impressions?
    • How about the Invasion of Iraq (aka. The Second Gulf War)?
  • p. 409: “Al Jazeera offers alternative coverage to the of major western channels…”
    • Consider this report from Fox News on US-Iran tensions (9/25/2019)–after the intro, go to 2:55.
    • Now, let’s watch coverage from Al Jazeera on (almost) US-Iran tensions (9/25/2019)
    • Notice anything different?
  • p. 413: “…the only unambiguous accomplishment of Iran’s so-called social media revolution was its revelation of an intense western longing for a world where information technology liberates rather than oppresses…”
    • Connect this to Curran, Fenton, & Freedman’s Misunderstanding the Internet…what is the promise of technology?
    • Now, consider the increased surveillance post-9/11.
  • p. 416: “…when greenscreens are being used….broadcast conventions demand that we suspend our disbelief; that we see but pretend we do not.”
  • pp. 417-428: Soap operas, streaming series (HBO, SHO, Netflix, Disney…etc.), and reality TV
  • pp. 428-439: The Active Audience
    • p. 429: “…texts do not embody one set of ambiguous meanings but are themselves polysemic…carriers of multiple meanings.”
    • Can anyone convince me of the value of audience meaning making and prosumption?
  • p. 447: “Television is pivotal to the production and reproduction of a promotional culture focused on the use of visual imagery to create value-added brands or commodity-signs.”
  • p. 448: From Baudrillard–“…a hyperreality in which we are overloaded with images and information.”
  • p. 449: “…televisions–or at least the screens…–have escaped the confines of the domestic and gone public….’Tv’ screens are appearing everywhere.”
    • You must have a comment about this point. Let me hear it.
  • p. 455: Elana Levine–“‘The medium need not speak in a single voice to be a factor in the exercise of dominant interests, nor do its audiences need to engage in a single experience of television…”

Time Permitting

  • View of Fox News
  • Diversity of Local Perspectives

Next Class

We’re going to dive into capitalism/neoliberalism next week and discuss Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism and “What Is Hauntology?” Don’t forget that your Critical Analysis of Media Essay is due in two weeks (4/13).


Works Cited

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. MIT Press, 2001.

Toscano, Aaron. Video Games and American Culture: How Ideology Influences Virtual Worlds. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020.

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