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
ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology » March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero

March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero

Announcements

In the e-mail I sent, I mentioned some changes and how I screwed up and gave you two “Coronavirus-Induced Reflections Post #1–March 23rd.” Just respond to the post you didn’t respond to last week. If you’ve responded to both in 250 words, great, you’re good until next week. Also, respond in 100 words to a classmate’s post on either “Coronavirus-Induced Reflections Post #1–March 23rd” you didn’t respond to.

Also, I’m pushing the due date of your final Social Construction of Technology essays to Friday, April 3rd by 11:00 pm. There’s already an assignment on Canvas. Remember, this is a 12-page essay.

William Gibson–Cyberpunk Author

Please review the information about William Gibson from March 9th’s page. This is part of Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy, but, as you noticed, Count Zero isn’t the type of sequel we’re used to. It references Neuromancer, but Count Zero doesn’t continue the plot of Neuromancer the same way most sequels (novels and films) do.

Neuromancer and Count Zero will be on your final exam, which is now going to be online through Canvas, so make sure you know their general plots and the characters. Also, notice one of the biggest differences between the two stories: where were all the families and children in Neuromancer? Also, was anyone able to find how long it had been between events from Neuromancer and Count Zero? {That would be an excellent Final Exam question…}

William Gibson’s Count Zero

I have notes up for today and Wednesday, so one page is all we need for this week, but I’ve linked it twice. Although I like Count Zero, I think Neuromancer is the better novel because it was so groundbreaking. Overall, Count Zero is good and brings up similar questions, but it was more action motivated than cerebral.

Main Characters

  • Turner–the mercenary
  • Marly Krushkhova–the art dealer
  • Bobby Newmark–emerging console cowboy
  • Angela “Angie” Mitchell–a very special augmented person
  • Christopher Mitchell–“lucky” biotech (hybridoma) engineer wanting to defect from Maas Biolabs to Hosaka
  • The Finn–the agoraphobic fence
  • Conroy–coordinator for Mitchell’s defection
  • Josef Virek–old mega rich entity
  • Paco–Virek’s assistant
  • Andrea–Marly’s roommate (sort of…)
  • Alain–Marly’s ex-boyfriend
  • Beauvoir–Vodou follower looking for Vyej Mirak, “Our Lady Virgin of Miracles”
  • Jackie–the horse of Danbala and an ex-dancer
  • Lucas–another Vodou follower
  • Jammer–nightclub owner
  • Jaylene Slide–a character you need to finish the book to meet

Plot

  • Turner, after rehabilitating from being blown up after his last job, agrees to extract Mitchell with the team Conroy assembles (all hired guns), but things don’t work out exactly as planned.
  • Marly, after being unemployed due to a bad art deal, gets a very lucrative proposal from Virek to find a special box.
  • Bobby Newmark dies on his first run (p. 58–we learn it was his very first run with the new ICE at the end of ch. 9) because he’s a guinea pig for Two-a-Day’s new deck, but he’s revived and goes searching for why…and gets brutally attacked. He gets fixed up and joins Beauvoir’s team to find the Virgin in cyberspace.
  • All of these plot lines eventually converge, revealing a vast network of people trying to find the source of those secret boxes…

The plot of Count Zero takes us back to the Sprawl and back into Cyberspace, the matrix. Remember, from our discussion on Neuromancer, Gibson coined the term “cyberspace.” Although characters “jack in” to the matrix, that component is less of a factor in Count Zero. Bobby Newmark gets fried when he first jacks in, and he goes in for an important run at the end, but he doesn’t go in as much as Case did. There are a lot more key characters in Count Zero, and their stories converge. A surface reading would be that that the plot is contrived to get all the subplots to conform. However, a deeper, more metaphorical reading is that nearly the entirety of human activity (and consciousness) is connected. We’ll go into economics, technology, and spirituality. There are a lot more themes, but these should help focus your attention to what’s important for this class. [Of course, if we were still meeting face to face, we’d have time for more discussion.]

Economics

Globalization and multinational corporations run the world much like they do in Neuromancer. You should be reading metaphorically and considering these corporations as allegories for contemporary big businesses today. Gibson noticed the growth and influence big corporations were having in the late-1970s and early 1980s. The idea that corporations would replace governments is a common theme of 1980s and 1990s science fiction.

Some of you a familiar with the Internet of Things (IoT), but, generally, just notice all the products you have that connect you and are connected to the Internet. Now, consider the way you do much of your purchases. Currently, you’re probably making more purchases online due to quarantine restrictions, but I believe you made a lot prior to COVID-19 shutting us down. The world of Count Zero isn’t quite post-apocalyptic (although bot it and Neuromancer reference a major war, which changed things), but it doesn’t seem to be entirely stable. However, there is still money, so there’s an economy, and, just like ours, people need to buy stuff to keep the economy going.

Technology

Of course, science fiction narratives have science and/or technology as major components driving a plot. While we can’t actually plug ourselves into the global communication technologies connected to the internet, metaphorically, the book comments on the increasing connectivity and interlocking of systems Gibson recognized. Put it this way, there was a time when some businesses weren’t hooked up to a network that allowed credit cards to be swiped and “instantly” work. Instead, when one bought products using a credit card, the cashier would make an imprint on a carbon copy receipt. The business would take the white copy, and the pink and yellow (technically, golden rod) would go to the credit card company and the buyer. You can see an example of this from the film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987).

Bobby gives us a clue as to how we should interpret technology when, early on in the novel, he points out that being online “wasn’t space” but “[humanity]’s unthinkable complex consensual hallucination, the matrix, cyberspace, where the great corporate hotcores burned like neon novas” (pp. 38-39).

Spirituality

There aren’t any actual ghosts, spirits, or other metaphysical entities in cyberspace, but there are programs the mimic these forces. Beauvoir, Lucas, Jackie, and Rhea are Vodou (alternate spelling) followers looking for the Virgin, who passes between the real world and cyberspace without having to jack in. We eventually learn that this individual is a surgically enhanced human. The technology that augmented her is truly out of this world!

Much like the Rastafarians from Neuromancer, the Vodou followers search for the divine through technology. The interpretation I think isn’t that Gibson is claiming there are gods in technology; instead, I think he’s alluding to the fact that humans see technology as salvation. Think back to Noble’s The Religion of Technology, where he traces the campaign to link scientific and technological discovery to Christianity. One possible interpretation is that Gibson is critiquing contemporary fascination and cult-like devotion to our devices.

Now, let’s not gloss over the fact that both novels use religions with roots in Africa: Rastafarianism and Vodou. Although many interpretations are possible, I will propose two. First, Rastafarianism and Vodou are smaller religions than the three Abrahamic religions, Hinduism, and Buddhism, which are the world’s dominant religions (there are, of course, other religions, but we recognize these as major religions). Therefore, there size makes using these “street religion[s], which came out of a dirt poor place a million years ago” (p. 77), as more portable in a world where dominant organizations (e.g. governments) seem to be nonexistent. Secondly, using a postcolonial lens, I think we can claim that these religions are prevalent in the Caribbean, and they got there because of the legacy of slavery–displaced groups formed these religious identities while not being connected to their ancestral lands. I know some will argue that Judaism has the same history (and I would love to read that argument), but we can point to Jewish holy sites the same way we can point to holy sites of the other dominant world religions–place has been settled (more or less). In contrast, Rastafarianism and Vodou have less settled holy sites, making them easier to incorporate into these novels where borders–the familiar borders of states and countries–are less important. The portability of the religions seems foundational, and cyberspace is well suited to conveying that.

Also, Beauvoir even references Ezili Freda (p. 58–end of ch. 9), so we know Gibson did some research.

Next Class

Don’t forget to turn in your final revisions of your Social Construction of Technology essays by Friday, April 3 at 11:00 pm. I’m giving you an extension.

Also, keep up with the reading. You have to read Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s “The Industrial Revolution in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century,” which is on Canvas.

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