ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology » January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective

January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective

Announcements

  • Well, who can we cheer for now…
  • EGSA Conference
    UNC Charlotte, Student Union
    Fri., 1/31 (Time TBA…most likely all day)

Rhetoric of Technology Introduction

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

Charles Bazerman on Rhetoric of Science and Rhetoric of Technology

Important components of “The Rhetoric of Technology” (pages refer to article pages)

  • “rhetorical productions that surround a material technology ” (p. 381)
  • Scientists have biases and are products of a culture (p. 383)
  • “Science…produces symbols…as its end claims, sentences, sententia…those symbols are rhetorical” (p. 384)
  • “Technology…produces objects and material processes” (p. 385)
  • “The rhetoric of technology shows how the objects of the built environment become part of our systems of goals, values, and meaning, part of our articulated interests, struggles, and activities” (p. 386)
  • The rhetoric of technology “is the rhetoric of all the discourses that surround and embed technology” (p. 387)

Consider how the following discourses might surround and embed technology?

  • Technical documents
  • Traffic signs
  • News reports on new technologies (e.g., newest smartphone)
  • YouTube “How To” videos
  • Science fiction

Kuhn, Thomas. “The The Route to Normal Science.”

We are only scratching the surface of Thomas Kuhn’s landmark essay The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Our discussion should not attempt to understand the sciences that Kuhn brings up; instead, we ought to think about how Kuhn says science, in general, produces paradigms under which scientists work. The following three phases will help us understand Kuhn’s argument:

  • Pre-paradigm stage
  • Normal Science (the paradigm)
  • Scientific revolution(s)

Ever heard the word paradigm? In what context? Please remember, though, we may be simplifying Kuhn’s ideas in order to grasp his understanding that sciences are socially constructed disciplines that require communication and acceptance of discourse communities in order to arrive at consensus. Although this work is from 1962, the process of creating knowledge and validating new knowledge hasn’t changed. What Kuhn doesn’t discuss is political and other purposeful (willful ignorance) denial of scientific authority.

  • Normal science: “research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time supplying the foundation for its further practice.” (p. 10)
  • Achievements (e.g. the example on light):
    • 1) “attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity”
      -and-
    • 2) “leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve” (p. 10).
  • Scientists who share paradigms also share “the same rules and standards for scientific practice” (p. 11).
  • Paradigms are a sign of maturity (p. 11)
    • Why?
  • Some social sciences have yet to acquire “universally received paradigms” (p. 15)
    • Then how does the field communicate with itself?
    • How is knowledge established?
    • Pools of facts open to casual observation and experiment.
  • Technology and the emergence of new science (pp. 15-16).
  • Casual fact gather–one working outside a paradigm–is seldom critical (p. 16).
  • Collections of facts and externally supplied belief (p. 17).
    • Different scientists “confronting the same range of phenomena…describe and interpret them in different ways.”
  • Paradigm acceptance (pp. 17-18)
    • Codification of experiments
    • Special equipment designed
    • Out with the old, in with the new
  • External needs of technology, medicine, and law coming to be (p. 19).
  • No need to build science anew under an established paradigm (pp. 19-20).
  • Communicating knowledge to others in the field (pp. 20-22).

Locating American Values

We might not get to this. One thing to be aware of is that I always plan for more than we can get through. Therefore, you should NEVER expect to get out of class before 3:15 pm.

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” technologies from American society.

Maintain an Online Presence

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. Please read Langdon Winner’s “Technologies as Forms of Life,” which we’ll discuss on Wednesday (1/15). If you’re really feeling ambitious, please read ahead for Wednesday (1/22) and finish Langdon Winner’s “Do Artifacts have Politics?” Remember, we don’t have class on Monday, 1/20–Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.