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

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Charlotte Debate
  • Conference Presentations
    • Critical Theory/MRG 2023 Presentation
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS 2024 Presentation
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SAMLA 2024 Presentation
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • SEACS 2022 Presentation
    • SEACS 2023 Presentation
    • SEACS 2024 Presentation
    • SEACS 2025 Presentation
    • SEWSA 2021 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
    • December 6th: Words and Word Classes
    • 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/WRDS 4011: “Rhetoric of Technology”
    • April 23rd: Presentation Discussion
    • April 2nd: Artificial Intelligence Discussion, machine (super)learning
    • April 4th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • April 9th: Tom Wheeler’s The History of Our Future (Part I)
    • February 13th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 15th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 1st: Technology and Postmodernism
    • February 20th: Technology and Gender
    • February 22nd: Technology, Expediency, Racism
    • February 27th: Writing Workshop, etc.
    • February 6th: The Religion of Technology (Part 1 of 3)
    • February 8th: Religion of Technology (Part 2 of 3)
    • January 11th: Introduction to the Course
    • January 16th: Isaac Asimov’s “Cult of Ignorance”
    • January 18th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 23rd: Technology and Democracy
    • January 25th: The Politics of Technology
    • January 30th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • Major Assignments for Rhetoric of Technology
    • March 12th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 3
    • March 14th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 3
    • March 19th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 3 of 3
    • March 21st: Writing and Reflecting: Research and Synthesizing
    • March 26th: Artificial Intelligence and Risk
    • March 28th: Artificial Intelligence Book Reviews
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 11th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 18th: Feminisms, Rhetorics, Herstories
    • April 25th:  Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • April 4th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • February 15th: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • February 29th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • February 8th: Isocrates
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 1
    • March 14th: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women
    • March 21st: Feminist Rhetoric(s)
    • March 28th: Knoblauch’s Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • 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
    • August 19: Introduction to the Course
    • August 21: More Introduction
    • August 26th: Consider Media-ted Arguments
    • August 28th: Media & American Culture
    • November 13th: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 3
    • November 18th: Feminism’s Non-Monolithic Nature
    • November 20th: Compulsory Heterosexuality
    • November 25th: Presentation Discussion
    • November 4: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 1
    • November 6: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 2
    • October 16th: No Class Meeting
    • October 21: Misunderstanding the Internet, Part 1
    • October 23: Misunderstanding the Internet, Part 2
    • October 28: The Internet, Part 3
    • October 2nd: Hauntology
    • October 30th: Social Construction of Sexuality
    • October 7:  Myth in American Culture
    • September 11: Critical Theory
    • September 16th: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • September 18th: Postmodernism, Part 1
    • September 23rd: Postmodernism, Part 2
    • September 25th: Postmodernism, Part 3
    • September 30th: Capitalist Realism
    • September 4th: The Medium is the Message!
    • September 9: The Public Sphere
  • Science Fiction and American Culture
    • April 10th: Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Parts III and IV)
    • April 15th: The Dispossessed (Part I)
    • April 17th: The Dispossessed (Part II)
    • April 1st: Interstellar (2014)
    • April 22nd: In/Human Beauty
    • April 24: Witch Hunt Politics (Part I)
    • April 29th: Witch Hunt Politics (Part II)
    • April 3rd: Catch Up and Start Octavia Butler
    • April 8th: Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Parts I and II)
    • February 11: William Gibson, Part II
    • February 18: Use Your Illusion I
    • February 20: Use Your Illusion II
    • February 25th: Firefly and Black Mirror
    • February 4th: Writing Discussion: Ideas & Arguments
    • February 6th: William Gibson, Part I
    • January 14th: Introduction to to “Science Fiction and American Culture”
    • January 16th: More Introduction
    • January 21st: Robots and Zombies
    • January 23rd: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • January 28th: American Studies Introduction
    • January 30th: World’s Beyond
    • March 11th: All Systems Red
    • March 13th: Zone One (Part 1)
      • Zone One “Friday”
    • March 18th: Zone One, “Saturday”
    • March 20th: Zone One, “Sunday”
    • March 25th: Synthesizing Sources; Writing Gooder
      • Writing Discussion–Outlines
    • March 27th: Inception (2010)
  • 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”
    • Judith Butler, an Introduction to Gender/Sexuality Studies
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • 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/WRDS 4011: “Rhetoric of Technology” » February 20th: Technology and Gender

February 20th: Technology and Gender

Plan for the Day

  • Technology and Yourself Essay Revisions Due, Friday, 3/01, 11:00pm, on Canvas
  • Finishing Up Love as a Technology
  • Finish up David Noble’s The Religion of Technology (Appendix)
  • Rachel N. Weber’s “Manufacturing Gender…”
  • Ruth Scwartz Cowan’s “The Industrial Revolution in the Home…”
  • Preview your next essay: Social Construction of Technology Essays

Is Love a Technology? (time permitting)

Head back to 2/15’s page on love and stuff. Let me briefly point out some important “science” in the article and show how the article reports on an academic research.

What’s lost and/or gained when a topic originally aimed at one audience is filtered for another audience? Does the title capture the substance of the article?

Social Construction of Technology Essays

Let’s preview your next essay, which is due You should have been thinking about this for a while. After all, it’s been on the Assignments page all semester: Social Construction of Technology Essays. Before we even look at the guidelines, I want to stress that this essay asks you to think of a social value or cultural belief (or condition) that appears to drive the production and/or use of a technology. It isn’t predominantly about a technology–it’s about showing how a technology can tell us about the culture from which it comes.

Rachel N. Weber’s “Manufacturing Gender in Military Cockpit Design”

Before we get into this, I need to make a disclaimer and focus our attention to more productive places. This reading (and the others) aren’t supposed to make you experts for or provide technical details on specific technologies. The readings try to help you understand the rhetoric of technology by demonstrating the how/why/when/where/who surrounding technology. Even if some technologies seem out of date, the readings still have value for two reasons: 1) the critical distance historical analysis allows and 2) analyzing the discourse and culture surrounding the technology. We’re more concerned with analyzing the cultural reasons, a story for why a technology came to be as opposed to trying to assess whether or not a technology was the “best” option. These historical analyses should help you (re)think about contemporary technologies. Your own analyses will be influenced by what others say about technologies because that discourse is loaded with cultural values. Remember, we use read technologies to discover something about our culture.

This article raises an important discussion about technological determinism. There’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if one argues that women can’t be pilots because they don’t fit into the cockpits. Well, if the cockpits are created for men…

  • Traditional feminist view is military weapons are the extension of the phallus (p. 373).
    • “‘inherent’ masculinity of such [military] technologies is socially constructed” (p. 373).
    • What are some commercial, non-military technologies that you can think of that have design bias against other body types?
    • Giant Head and coach seats…
  • Ergonomics and Anthropometrics: guidelines for designing equipment (p. 374).
  • “Design bias has far-reaching implications for gender equity in the military” (p. 375)
  • Cockpit designs protect traditionally male occupations (p. 375).

Relevant Social Groups

I want to look at the following passage for two reasons: 1) it’s relevant to Weber’s article and the rhetoric of technology in general, and 2) it demonstrates how to synthesize quotations, which is something you need to work on for your Technology and Yourself Essay revisions…

  • From Marconi’s Wireless and the Rhetoric of a New Technology (Toscano 2012, p. 36):

    No matter how well an invention works, it must also adhere to larger cultural values. Relevant social groups immersed in a particular culture affix meaning to inventions, thus, building technological frames. Bijker (1995) explains that “[a] technological frame is built up when interaction ‘around’ an artifact begins”; therefore, if a frame is not built up in order to “move members of an emerging relevant social group in the same direction,” a technology will fail (p. 123). Before users will accept a technology, they must believe the product adheres to social values. These values give meaning to a technological frame. Bijker observes that “[a] technological frame comprises all elements that influence the interactions within relevant social groups and lead to the attribution of meanings to technical artifacts—and thus to constituting technology” (p. 123). Therefore, these frames can be understood as sets of meaning(s) groups affix to technology.
  • “The process of design accommodation in the military became a process of negotiation between various social groups who held different stakes in and interpretations of the technology in question” (paraphrasing Pinch and Bijker, 1984).
    • So what does this mean for Weber’s analysis? This reading (and Fallows) are about the relevant social groups within the military who affix meaning and push for particular technological developments. Technologies don’t just come to be because they are the best–they are made to fit the values of a particular culture (big and small cultures).
  • Les Aspin’s directive to include more women in combat (p. 376).
    • “negotiations over accommodation arose as a result of changes made in policies regarding women in combat” (p. 376).
    • New JPATS sitting height threshold to reach 80% of eligible women (p. 376).
  • Pragmatists note that design changes could mean more foreign sales (p. 377). $$$$$ = motivation

Framing the Discussion/Setting the Rules

  • Changing the “debate” from accommodating women to accommodating all service members (top of p. 378).
    • Notice that Weber’s argument is that change happened, in part, because of rhetoric: The major strategy wasn’t to claim the changes were for expanding women’s opportunities but for expanding opportunities for more military personnel.
  • The perspective of female officers seeing a demand of special rights from women in the military (p. 378).
  • Winning aircraft contracts linked to crew accommodations: This policy decision drives what features and to what specifications new technologies (aircraft) will be designed–politics of technology (p. 379).
  • Tailhook scandal and Anita Hill–early 1990s and sexual harassment awareness.

Questions for this article:

  • What’s feminism got to do with manly stuff like science and technology?
  • What’s the goal of this article?
  • What happens when spaces have to be designed?
  • Is it fair to say the military was sexist because of its “typical” or assumed pilot size?
  • Cause and effect. Could it be that gender exclusion led to the androcentric (male oriented) design? In other words, what comes first: sexism or sexist products?

Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s “The Industrial Revolution in the Home”

Before we get into Cowan’s article/chapter, we need to get your minds going, so let me ask some questions:

  • What is or what defines the middle class? Who are they, what do they look like, where do they live?
  • What are some prevailing attitudes surrounding housewives (homemakers) and women’s work?
  • List the chores you had to do as a child and the ones you have to do today. What technologies did you use?
  • How is Cowan making her case? What common ways does she support her arguments?
  • Obviously, the title tells readers they’re going to learn about technological change in the home. However, Cowan appears to have a larger point. Reflect on the conclusion, and come up with what’s behind the surface discussion of housewives of (mostly) Muncie, IN in the 1910s-1930s.

Cowan mentions the phrase “functionalist approach” when referring to past ideas about technology and social change. The functionalist approach follows technological determinism, which claims technology comes about and changes society. We know that’s too simple an explanation. The functionalist approach is somewhat opposed to Cowan’s (and our) sociological approach to studying technology:

  • Functionalist approach: The parts of human systems can be studied in isolation without much regard for worrying about the effects of the various parts of the system on the whole. All the various parts contribute to the entirety of the system, society. The goal of study is to try to improve society by identifying what works but not necessarily asking for change/activism. Activism would disrupt the “natural” path to ordering society.
  • Cowan’s approach: Human systems are complex webs and we need to compare appropriate parts of society (whether historical or contemporary) to understand. The goal might be to improve society, but it could also just be to describe society and offer possible interpretations. Cowan’s goal is to look at “one kind of technological change affecting one aspect of family life in only one of the many social classes of families” (p. 283). She feels the other approach is making too many sweeping generalizations because it’s trying to have one change affect too much (too many across a diverse land). Also, she doesn’t think they have the appropriate evidence.
  • Which is the more postmodern philosophy?

Cowan’s exact research question: “What happened, I asked, to middle-class American women when the implements with which they did their everyday household work changed?” (p. 283)

Below are some key quotations/sections we should address:

  • p. 283: Defining middle-class women through magazine readership.
  • p. 285: New household technologies eliminated (or reduced the time it took to complete) some chores, but they added new ones.
  • p. 286: “marked structural changes in the work force, changes that increased the work load and the job description of the workers that remained. New jobs were created for which new skills were required.”
  • p. 287: Decline of free help and “the servant problem.”
  • pp. 288-289: Advertising to condition housewives and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’–not a direct quote.
  • p. 290: mothers “were willing and able to read about the latest discoveries in nutrition, in the control of contagious diseases, or in the techniques of behavioral psychology.”
  • p. 291: Guilt and shame for having stinky children or a bathroom full of invisible germs.
  • p. 294: “[F]or middle-class American housewives between the wars [WWI and WWII]…social changes were concomitant with a series of technological changes in the equipment that was used to do the work.”

Preview Technology Project

Let’s preview your Technology Project. This project is worth 200 points–20% of your grade. I have reduced the page requirement, but please know that this is a writing intensive course, so I absolutely have to have writing from you. You have the option to do visual “essays” for this assignment, but, if you didn’t do all the required writing for the other two essays, I suggest you pick an essay for this final project.

This project isn’t going to be a process work–I’m not collecting drafts–so I’m going to be more lenient on it than the previous essays. However, you still must do a presentation based on your Technology Project, and we’ll discuss that later this semester.

Next Class

Your “Technology and Yourself” Essay revisions are due next class–3/01.

Keep up with your reading. We’ll discuss James Fallows’s “The American Army and the M-16 Rifle” and Hunter Havelin Adams, III’s “African Observers of the Universe” on Thursday, 2/22. This chapter is mainly about who can legitimately claim to be a scientist based on the “rules” set forth by scientific authorities. It’s longer than the other articles, so you’ll need more than 20 mins to read it. A close reading will allow you to reflect more on what the author is saying. More reflection, more chance to relate the ideas to your own experiences.

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