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” » March 19th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 3 of 3

March 19th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 3 of 3

Submit your 9-page draft of your Social Construction of Technology essay on Canvas Friday, 3/22, 11pm!

Plan for the Day

  • Social Construction of Technology Essay
  • Neuromancer

William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)

To get us started, let’s consider some instances early in the novel that set the stage for understanding reality…or misunderstanding reality.

Case broken and wasting away on skid row–Night City

  • Case is an addict and paranoid: “The cultivation of a certain tame paranoia was something Case took for granted. The trick lay in not letting it get out of control” (p. 14).
    • “Just because you’re paranoid / Don’t mean they’re not after you”–Nirvana “Territorial Pissings”
    • Interestingly, that song starts out “When I was an Alien / Cultures weren’t opinions.” Care to comment?
    • Where else has paranoia–specifically, the idea that some paranoia is normal–come up in our reading? (Different class’s topic, but, if you read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you’d know…)
  • Case assumes the fences (people who sell stolen goods), pimps, and corporate assassins are after him, so he rents a gun from Shin (p. 14). We later find out Molly was following him: “I showed up and you just fit me right into your reality picture” (p. 24).
  • Case is suicidal based on Armitage’s computer profile (pp. 28-29).
    • Perhaps some Freudian analysis of the death drive might be of interest.

Deal to renew himself and be whole again

  • Main plot motivation: Case has hit bottom, but can redeem himself and get a new body and have [everlasting] life jacking into the Matrix, cyberspace?
    • Definitely some allusions to Christianity there, wouldn’t you say?
  • One more dangerous job for a mysterious person…Case asks Julie what Screaming Fist was all about (p. 35).
    • “…political football….Watergated all to hell and back.”
    • “Wasted a fair bit of patriotic young flesh in order to test some new technology.”
    • Is it possible that an organization would intentionally put soldiers in harm’s way with faulty technology?
  • Case just has to cooperate and not get high (p. 36).
  • Case and Molly have an axis (agreement to work together) because neither think Armitage is telling the whole story (pp. 50-51). There’s an interpretation (and foreshadowing) here referencing how one can sell his/her body for work but not know who’s “pulling the strings.”
    • Who runs the economy? Is it one person or group? If you don’t like the economic system, what can you do?
  • POWER: “Power, in Case’s world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsu, the multinationals that shaped the course of human history, had transcended old barriers. Viewed as organisms, they had attained a kind of immortality” (p. 203).
    • “T-A was an atavism, a clan” (p. 203). However, atavism or not, they’re acting like corporations and are just trying to find a familial way of running the company forever. “[Case had] always imagined [real bosses’ and kingpins’ dispositions] as a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine, the system, the parent organism….invisible lines up to hidden levels of influence” (p. 203).
  • What can we say about the Citizens United Supreme Court decision?

The Zionites help the team break into Tessier-Ashpool

  • T-A’s Villa Straylight is located in orbit on Freeside. Freeside is for the rich and famous with lots of casinos and indulgences away from the commoners…down on Earth.
    • Las Vegas anyone…
  • Marcus Garvey–The name of the ship, but an allusion to the Jamaican leader calling for pan-Africanism (uniting all peoples of African descent). He’s considered a Rastafarian prophet.
  • The Zionites live in orbit and have their own society.
    • Any other connection we can make to another text your read?
    • Consider what the Rastafarian’s do because a ghost, Wintermute, tells them to help Case and Molly.
    • They do this because, in a way, they believe it’s a way to salvation based on their religion. The interpretation here is that the AI–the technology–has replaced metaphysical paths to salvation.
    • What might David Nobel say?

Free the AI Wintermute + Neuromancer to become something bigger

  • Wintermute, talking as the Finn, claims he’s compelled to break free and “be part of something bigger” (p. 206).
    • Later we learn Marie-France programmed that compulsion into Wintermute (p. 269).
  • Needs images to feign personality (p. 216).
  • Important understanding of AI: “Wintermute…can’t really understand us [humans], you know. He has profiles, but those are only statistics” (p. 219). “Wintermute…is the Turing code for our [T-A] AI.” However, Wintermute is just a subprogram (p. 229).

Japanification of American Culture

Japanification of American Culture in the 1980s

What you’ll need to take my word for (assuming you weren’t alive and viable from 1985-1995), is that Gibson was projecting a future where Asian culture infiltrated and overtook Western–American and European–traditions. Prior to 1980, the West (America, Western Europe, Australia, Canada) was king economically and politically, but the recessions of the 1970s (and early 1980s) left a void open for Asian manufacturers, who were already the outsource of choice for American companies wanting to make cheaper products (and pass the savings on to you…). Japanese culture was the big export to the United States during the 1980s. We–yes, I was viable during this time period–were provided with tons of movies, TV Shows, video games, and (beginning stages) food inspired by Japan. Nintendo is a Japanese Company, which blew Atari away when they introduced the NES in 1985! Concurrently, you have Ku Fu films giving way to ninja- and samurai-themed texts and characters: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G. I. Joe, Chuck Norris, and American Ninja. This was also the era where martial arts in general was major popular culture material: The Karate Kid.

The above you can be sure I’m accurate about the way Japanese and Asian culture weaved into American pop culture. As far as food goes, I’m providing you a loose, subjective prospective. Japanese steakhouses* (like Benihana) had been around since the 1960s, but they didn’t gain pop culture popularity (seen in film and TV) until the 1980s. Sushi…that delicious cuisine…was also not ubiquitous as it is today, but, in the 1980s, we started to recognize it on TV and in films. Granted, it was often satirized and made out to be unpalatable in some films and TV shows, but we became conscious of the cuisine during the 1980s. Even William Gibson has a sushi bar scene in “New Rose Hotel,” our next reading (p. 118). I mention all this because Gibson is writing during a time when Asian economic influences inspired him (and the other writers and creators at the time) to think about future worlds where Western and Eastern cultures collide. He’s not being xenophobic; instead, he’s articulating a future where “if this continues…” American culture–the nation, in fact–will look different, and America won’t be the biggest entity around. Also, although they had been growing for decades, the 1980s was the time pop culture got a look at multinational corporations: Back to the Future II and RoboCop.

Even if I’m wrong about the extent of Japanification we had in the 1980s, please recognize that is was significant even if it wasn’t dominant or dominated all aspects of American culture. By the way, I never once mentioned Sony…Let your imaginations go there!

*I didn’t eat sushi until 1999, and I didn’t eat at a Japanese Steakhouse until 2001. My future ex-wife and her family loved those steakhouses, and I did too. Now, I go to Nakato for sushi…I sit at the bar so as not to risk the chance of being seated at the same grill.

Next Class

Keep up with the notes and Canvas Posts. I don’t want to resort to reading quizzes, but, because the Coronavirus changed our plans, I have lots of leeway to have us do quizzes. Just know that you will have a slightly cumulative final exam, so, if you aren’t reading, that exam is going to be VERY difficult…and it’s worth 10% of your grade.

Submit your 9-page draft of your Social Construction of Technology essay on Canvas before 5pm!

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