Rhetoric of Technology

"Postmodern Spacings: A Colloquy

by Martin E. Rosenberg

This was a colloquy on the nature of space, its hybridities with respect to virtual and real environments, in terms of the relationship between different constructions of space as well as different models of duration. Participants included Mark Nunes, Martin E. Rosenberg and Paul Bains.

_Postmodern Culture_: Found online at Project MUSE (JHUP): Volume 8, Number 3, May 1998
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/toc/pmc8.3.html

Technical Documents as Rhetorical Agency

by Nathan R. Johnson

“The Human Barnyard” and Kenneth Burke's Philosophy of Technology

by Ian Hill

The Concept of Appropriation As a Heuristic for Conceptualising the Relationship Between Technology, People and Organisations.

by Chris Kimble

P. Baillette and C. Kimble. The Concept of Appropriation as a Heuristic for Conceptualising the Relationship between Technology, People and Organisations. Proceedings of 13th UKAIS Conference, (April 2008), Bournemouth, 2008.

The stated aim of this conference is to debate the continuing evolution of IS in businesses and other organisations.... more The stated aim of this conference is to debate the continuing evolution of IS in businesses and other organisations. This paper seeks to contribute to this debate by exploring the concept of appropriation from a number of different epistemological, cultural and linguistic viewpoints to allow us to explore 'the black box' of appropriation and to gain a fuller understanding of the term. At the conceptual level, it will examine some of the different ways in which people have attempted to explain the relationship between the objective and concrete features of technology and the subjective and shifting nature of the people and organisation within which that technology is deployed. At the cultural and linguistic level the paper will examine the notion as it is found in the Francophone literature, where the term has a long and rich history, and the Anglophone literature where appropriation is seen as a rather more specialist term. The paper will conclude with some observations on the ongoing nature of the debate, the value of reading beyond the literature with which one is familiar and the rewards that come from exploring different historical (and linguistic) viewpoints.

The Technological Discourse of Feminine Corporeality

by Allison Brownlow

Rediscovering the "Back-and-Forthness" of Rhetoric in the Age of YouTube

by Jon Wallin

Co-authored with Brian Jackson, published in the December 2009 issue of College Composition and Communication

Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube have made it likely that students participate in online back-and-forth exchanges... more Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube have made it likely that students participate in online back-and-forth exchanges that infuence their rhetorical literacy. Because of the back-and-forth nature of online communities, we turn to the procedural, critical, and progressive qualities of dialectic as a means of accounting for what makes public deliberation effective and how we can teach students to deliberate.

Rhetoric and the Neurosciences: Engagement and Exploration

by David Gruber

POROI Vol 7(1) Co-authored with Jordynn Jack, Lisa Keränen, Matt B. Morris, and John M. McKenzie

The expansion of the neurosciences has opened up new areas of exploration for rhetoric of science and technology... more The expansion of the neurosciences has opened up new areas of exploration for rhetoric of science and technology scholars. Consequently, members of the Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (ARST) consider this an appropriate time to address the relationship between rhetoric and the neurosciences. In so doing, this essay calls for collaborative scholarship between neuroscientists and rhetoricians and advances a four-part agenda for future research.

The Rhetoric of Decision Science, or Herbert A. Simon Says

by Carolyn R. Miller

in The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry, ed. Herbert W. Simons. University of Chicago Press, 1990, 162–184.

The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Controversy In North Carolina

by Carolyn R. Miller

Katz, Steven B., and Carolyn R. Miller. 1996. The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Controversy in North Carolina: Toward a Rhetorical Model of Risk Communication. In Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America, edited by C. G. Herndl and S. C. Brown. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press: 111–140.

Opportunity, Opportunism, and Progress: Kairos In the Rhetoric of Technology

by Carolyn R. Miller

Technology As a Form of Consciousness: A Study of Contemporary Ethos

by Carolyn R. Miller

The Ethos of Science and the Ethos of Technology

by Carolyn R. Miller

Proceedings of the Technical Communication Sessions, 31st Conference on College Composition and Communication. Washington, DC, 1980. 184–191.

This Is Not An Essay

by Carolyn R. Miller

What Can Automation Tell Us About Agency?

by Carolyn R. Miller

Rhetoric Society Quarterly (2007): 37(2): 137–157.

Computerized systems for automated assessment of writing and speaking
create a situation in which Burkean... more Computerized systems for automated assessment of writing and speaking
create a situation in which Burkean symbolic action confronts nonsymbolic
motion. What is at stake in such confrontations is rhetorical
agency. In this article, an informal survey that asked teachers of writing
and speaking about automated assessment informs an analysis of agency
that contrasts writing and speaking along the dimensions of performance,
audience, and interaction. The analysis suggests that agency can
be understood as the kinetic energy of performance that is generated
through a process of mutual attribution between rhetor and audience.
Agency is thus a property of the rhetorical event, not of agents, and
can best be located between the two traditional ways of defining agency:
as rhetorical capacity and as rhetorical effectivity. Unwillingness to
attribute agency to automated assessment systems makes them rhetorically
ineffective and morally problematic.

The Presumptions of Expertise

by Carolyn R. Miller

Configurations 11:2 (20030): 163–202.

The civilian nuclear power industry seems likely to leave three legacies: the problems of decommissioning worn-out... more The civilian nuclear power industry seems likely to leave three legacies: the problems of decommissioning worn-out plants, the necessity of long-term waste storage, and the discourse of risk analysis. Risk analysis, a form of technology assessment, developed from the efforts of the federal government to sell the nuclear option both to the electric utility companies and to the public and is now widely used in environmental and health policy decision making. It is a discourse that attempts to counter technological uncertainty with rhetorical control. This paper explores some ways in which rhetorical ethos operates in risk analysis, looking specifically at the rhetorical deployment of expertise and taking as a case example what is perhaps the most famous risk analysis document, the Reactor Safety Study (RSS), (sometimes known as the Rasmussen Report), prepared for the Atomic Energy Commission in 1975.

Expertise and Agency: Transformations of Ethos In Human-Computer Interaction

by Carolyn R. Miller

In The Ethos of Rhetoric, edited by M. Hyde. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press: 2004, 197–218.

Hey, Mind Reading Just Happens - Be Afraid and Happy

by David Gruber

Guest Blogger for "Critical Neuroscience"

Is fMRI brain-prediction research sexy or scary? Is it pursuing the ultimate invasion of privacy, an extension of... more Is fMRI brain-prediction research sexy or scary? Is it pursuing the ultimate invasion of privacy, an extension of Gilles Deleuze’s (1990) “society of control,” or is it forging a practical line of defense that protects the public from criminal minds intent on mass destruction? Is it handing big marketing firms a decoding key to our inner desires, or is it developing an incredible way to diagnose disease? I consider how and why a specific pattern of mass media communication can lead to a deterministic discourse that rhetorically forecloses, in advance, participatory conversation about the future of brain-prediction.

Learning From History: World War II and the Culture of High Technology

by Carolyn R. Miller

Journal of Business and Technical Communication 12:3 (1998): 288–315.