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)
    • November 15th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • November 1st: Stylistic Variations
    • November 29th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Rhetoric of Fear (prose example)
    • November 8th: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • October 11th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 18th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 4th: Form and Function
    • 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
    • November 1: Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Part I)
    • November 13: The Dispossessed (Part I)
    • November 15: The Dispossessed (Part II)
    • November 20: In/Human Beauty
    • November 27: Wall-E and Trash
    • November 6: Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Parts I and II)
    • November 8: Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Parts III and IV)
    • October 11th: Zone One (Part III)
    • October 16th: Babel-17 (Parts I & II)
    • October 18th: Babel-17 (Parts III, IV, & V)
    • October 25: Inception (2010)
    • October 30th: Interstellar (2014)
    • October 4th: Zone One (Part 1)
    • October 9th: Zone One (Part II)
    • 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
    • How to Make an Argument with Sources
    • 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 4275: Rhetoric of Technology » January 15th: Technology and Democracy

January 15th: Technology and Democracy

Today we’ll go over the following (but not necessarily in this order):

  • Postmodernism
  • Locating American Values
  • Catch-up on Thomas Kuhn (if needed)
  • Webpages or online presence
  • Whale and The Reactor Summary

Locating American Values

We didn’t get to this on Tuesday, so let’s get back to our theoretical exploration of locating a society’s values. Because this course is a theoretical exploration of how we can locate a society’s values by “reading” its technologies, we ought to think about what those values are. This page asks you to think about American values. The goal of this next exercise is to identify values that we might be able to “read” in technologies from American society.

Science and Knowledge Creation, a Kuhnian Perspective

Before we go on to Winner, let’s head back to Kuhn and discuss Scientific paradigms and revolutions. There is a separate field called the Rhetoric of Science, but we’re going to focus on Kuhn’s discussion of knowledge creation (and assumptions) in science.

Langdon Winner

Overall, Winner discusses the political nature of technologies; specifically, he’s trying to get us to see beyond the functional uses of technologies–their tool-related attributes–and to “read” technologies critically. A critical awareness of technology means one looks at how technologies come to be in relation to social forces that help construct those technologies. Winner provides many examples in these two readings, and we’ll look at them more closely.

A note on his introduction to the chapter

Winner begins by pointing out that we’re an advanced technological society, but we don’t pay close enough attention to the effects of technology. His point in stating, “It is reasonable to suppose that a society thoroughly committed to making artificial realities would have given a great deal of thought to the nature of that commitment” (p.3), is to set up that we haven’t thought much about our commitment to technological creation, specifically technologies that provide us artificial realities. That lack of attention (even 35 years after he brought this up) is why this class exists. Two other points Winner makes related to this topic are the following:

  • “Why has a culture so firmly based upon countless sophisticated instruments, techniques, and systems remained so steadfast in its reluctance to examine its own foundations” (p. 5).
  • “What the others do care about, however, are tools and uses” (p. 5).
    • Most of us–including the shortsightedness of the field of Technical Communication–just think about using these tools for a purpose.
    • Additionally, their presence is invisible to us. Electricity is our most used technology. Try to consider a time when you aren’t using it…

Chapter 1: “Technologies as Forms of Life”

  • “Synthetic conditions…ha[ve] become more ‘real’ than the actual experience” (p. 3).
  • Philosophy of technology: “to examine critically the nature and significance of artificial aids to human activity” (p. 4).
  • Technological somnambulism: the ideology that “the only reliable sources for improving the human condition stem from new machines, techniques, and chemicals” (p. 5).
  • Ways to view technological development:
    • Technological determinism:
      • a. “the idea that technological innovation is the basic cause of changes in society and that human beings have little choice other than to sit back and watch this ineluctable process unfold” (pp. 9-10).
      • b. “the idea that technology develops as the sole result of an internal dynamic and then, unmediated by any other influence, molds society to fit its pattern” (p. 21).
    • Social determination (construction) of technology:
      • a. the idea that we can understand technology’s presence by “look[ing] behind technical devices to see the social circumstances of their development, deployment, and use” (p. 20-21).
      • b. the idea that technology represents–is a product of–the society from which it comes.
  • Once technologies become stabilized–part of the built environment–they become “forms of life in the most powerful sense: life would scarcely be thinkable without them”; technologies “become ‘second nature'” (p. 11).
  • “As technologies become woven into the texture of everyday existence…[they] shed their tool-like qualities to become part of our very humanity” (p. 12).
  • Technology–an adventure in babysitting (pp. 12-13).
  • Marx on Technology: “individuals are actively involved in the daily creation and recreation, production and reproduction of the world in which they live” (p. 15)
    • Look here for a brief introduction (not an exhaustive discussion) of Marxist Theory.
  • “Through technological creation and many other ways as well, we make a world for each other to live in” (p. 18)

Winner is talking about not only engineers or inventors, but humans engaging in social conduct–we create ideologies that “govern”–implicitly or explicitly–our activities.

Maintain an Online Presence All Semester

As I mentioned last class, this is still a work in progress. I’m trying to evolve the online presence requirement, adapting it to more contemporary situations and technologies. However, it is very important to understand where the assignment originated. Mainly, we need to slow down and pay greater attention (as opposed to money) to technology.

Fifteen-twenty years ago, webpages were the thing students did to demonstrate they had mastery of communication in digital environments. A webpage is still a great tool to showcase your work, but, specifically reflecting on our course topics can be done other ways. Let’s consider ways to fulfill this assignment. Some of you are already experts at online this, and some of you are brand new. If you’d like to do a traditional webpage, be my guest. Use whatever platform you want to create the webpage for this course.

Eventually, I’ll want you to have a page with the following discussions:

  • Reading Reflections: text, images, video, etc.
  • Locating American Values
  • Democratizing/Oppressing Technologies

I don’t expect you to be a web editor. This assignment is to reinforce our discussions about technology and to have a place where you can showcase your ideas about technology.

Alternatively…

It’s 2020, so I want you to have alternatives. What is something you can do weekly to show you’re reflecting on the course material? How might you use Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook for weekly reflective posts?

Keep up With the Reading

I have the readings for the next few weeks on Canvas. There’s no class Monday, January 20th in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr Day, so we’ll meet again Wednesday (1/22) and discuss Langdon Winner’s “Do Artifacts have Politics?”(another chapter from him).

Remember, this is a writing intensive course, and we’re going to be discussing writing throughout the semester. I’ve set aside time for writing discussions and workshops. We will also use those days to catch up on material we might not have covered.

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