mapping play
From Johndan I picked up on this interesting model of "play" (PDF) from the Dubberly Design Office. I'd stick the image up here but it is quite intricate and you'd really need to download the PDF to...
View ArticleThe apprehensive economics of rhetoric
I just finished reading Agamben's essay "What is an apparatus?" (AMZ). It raises some interesting connections for rhetoric that I had certainly not thought of before, at least not in this way. The...
View Articleavatar: exposure, immersion, becoming
So to dispense with the critique of dismissal, yes, you could say Avatar is Dances with Wolves in 3-D, or any other narrative of the imperialist-gone-native with the beautiful native informant love...
View Articledigital (post)humanism pays attention
As an erstwhile practitioner of zazen meditation, I can say one thing with a fair degree of certainty: humans suck at focusing on a single thing, or even worse, on no thing. PBS Frontline's recent,...
View Articlegeneral writing, major rhetorical strategies, and private compositions
I apologize for not being able to avoid the militaristic pun, but it is actually quite appropriate for the hierarchical, even hylomorphic structures we often apply in first-year composition. Thanks to...
View Articletargeting computers and writing: some selections
Some notes and thoughts on the recently completed Computers and Writing conference… As I tweeted during the conference, the subject of gaming is a growing interest in the field. From rhetorical...
View Articleobject-oriented creativity
I would appear to have the opposite reading/writing problem from many of my graduate students. They often cite a difficulty in stopping reading and research to start writing. My problem is that I often...
View Articlewriting’s short term
I'm working on a piece on memory, which I'll be discussing in a talk at UT Austin in February, and it departs from this line in A Thousand Plateaus that I mentioned in my last post: “one writes using...
View Articleit hurts when I think
Perhaps you have seen this recent Science article (the paywall article itself or an Guardian piece on it.) If you haven’t, this is a psychological study where participants are left alone with their...
View Articlerhetoric’s default mode
Following on my previous post, a continuation of a discussion of “neurorhetoric.” Generally speaking, rhetoricians, like other humanists, approach science with a high degree of skepticism, especially a...
View Articlewriting and the speed of thought
When we first learned to write, we focused on holding the pencil and forming the letters. The attention given to the physical task of writing likely interfered with our ability to give attention to...
View Articlecognition’s earthrise
If you do not know then Wikipedia will happily tell you that the 1968 photo known as “Earthrise” (unsurprisingly taken by an astronaut) has been called the “most influential environmental photograph...
View ArticleBrain to brain communication and the (new) materiality of thought
Brain-to-brain communication is probably something you’ve encountered in the news in the last year or so. We’ve seen things such as monkeys controlling robotic arms with their thoughts, paralyzed...
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