DECEMBER 4, 2018 (CPE Reflection)

DECEMBER 4, 2018 BLOG POST
CPE Reflection

I approached the critical photo essay assignment with some apprehension at first. I attribute this to the fact that I hadn't yet found a topic that "fired me up," as the young people say. A few exceptions appeared here and there, with the Baron reading and, of course, the Wysocki article where she discusses Kant. Those two had a few sparks for me while reading, but nothing figuratively slapped me in the face with excitement. However, once I had a rough idea going, everything began falling into place. I essentially tossed out my annotated bibliography because of the topic refining and turned my attention to my three philosophers, Chomsky, Strawson, and Wittgenstein (who I intend to study more of over winter break, wish me luck!).

After I fleshed out the work of these philosophers, some feedback from Professor Downs implored me to dig deeper, which is where it dawned on me to explore Instagram. In all honesty, this arose from the fact that I was thinking about how freeing it was to be off of it for a whole month or so, at least at the time of my topic refining. To make a long story short, the process for locating my topic was long and bumpy, but once I found it the project went smoothly and my apprehension faded away.

This assignment was different from other writing projects in that I hadn't explored visual components heavily before in writing. An example would be in Professor Schlenz's class, where I used some basic, and I do mean basic, design functions to make an essay look somewhat more aesthetic for a journal or something other. I toyed with font and a border around the Word document. Nothing extensive, and I loathed people that put images in essays back in those days. It seemed like a type of distraction that hideously unaligned the text and off-put the vibe of reading the words. I avoided images and distractions like the plague to achieve a maximum level of "black-and-whiteness" with my academic writing. So this assignment was unlike any other I had attempted, and that too stressed me out to some extent.

Once I realized where I was going, I just had to think of a slick design, something relatively modern and relevant, not too flashy with an edge of class. I sketched some ideas down for how I thought the assignment should look. I've attached an image below of my sketches for reference.

It occurred to me that I should explore Instagram specifically for design and build off of what most people find familiar when using the app without thinking about it, like how modern psychology shows us that people associate certain colors or shapes with logos and designs that they see on a day-to-day basis. I thought it would be clever to utilize the familiar in that regard, and set up each screen like posts of an Instagram account. After I lined up all the pictures and did some swift editing, using Word, the Snipping Tool, and my phone's screenshot function. Not entirely "clever," but a decent demonstration of ingenuity at least.

The design moved along and I didn't find this particularly difficult. The information was the difficult part, that is, arranging it in an aesthetic way that readers enjoy looking at. In this regard, the group feedback from Kas, Amanda, and Jay was helpful for shoving those misinformed design ideas out the window. I quickly took their advice and developed something more appealing, and easier to read for that matter. By my second draft I was chunking all the pieces together and sifting through information at a productive rate. Then an obstacle appeared in my path.

Oh obstacle. Obstacle: connecting the dots. How was I going to connect the ideas of these philosophers with a modern invention like Instagram's communication? That was the tricky part, and I'd even argue that I didn't solidify that connection as well as I would have liked even when I turned it in and said goodbye forever. Professor Downs' feedback on my second draft was positive, but I wanted to listen to what he was saying about essentially "drawing a connection" between Instagram and the suspiciously specific philosophers. I was also lacking a research issue, as it turns out. This was certainly the case, but I knew that while writing the Wittgenstein posts, naturally, a strange type of thesis was born from how I was thinking about the decay of communication through Instagram. I wanted to build on that since, naturally, these things rarely seem to occur. At the end of the day though, I was ready to call the project and be done. My final draft edits were relatively minimal, some adjustments here and there, sliding around of shapes, etc. Nothing too drastic seeing as Professor Downs thought it was swell work to begin with. That was encouraging, but I knew it my heart that the amount of work had paid off. Without "tooting my own horn," it looks good, and if I was a random person, the design would catch my eye with its style.

NOVEMBER 26, 2018 (Clive Thompson 1)

NOVEMBER 26, 2018 BLOG POST
Smarter Than You Think by Clive Thompson

Thompson's book, "Smarter Than You Think," strikes me as interesting for a variety of reasons. The chapter I reflected on the most heavily was Chapter two though, which concentrates on memory and Thompson's concept of "digital memory." He writes, "The way machines will become integrated into our remembering is likely to be in smaller, less intrusive bursts. In fact, when it comes to finding meaning in our digital memories, less may be more” (37). Now I'd like to unpack this quotation from the book beginning with the idea of machines becoming "integrated" into our remembering. What kind of extensions can we make and infer from this idea? For me it brings-to-mind the idea that human memory has evolved to keep up with the developments and creations of mankind, that is, memory served as an extremely important tool of rhetoric in the time of Aristotle's rhetorical canon, but now most of the information that people would be required to remember can be Googled in an instant, and therefore, memory is much less useful with the world's greatest search engine at your finger tips. Observing this phenomena as adaptation might be too optimistic, which I am tempted to protest. The truth, relatively speaking, is that human memory has had to work much less hard as the times have changed. I would even suggest that memory has weakened significantly since the development of the Internet, and arguably even before that, with the development of books, where information people couldn't remember, because it was so plentiful, had to be recorded. I suspect this was why Socrates and Plato protested writing their teachings down.

Now what does Thompson mean by "...finding meaning in our digital memories..."? That's a somewhat more difficult idea to wrestle with, but I think that compromising the memory, by not employing it for anything, is dangerous for mankind. Thompson explores "lifeloggers," who, in the simplest terms, log every part of their banal, day-to-day lives on the web, or through some technological means. This allows them to, in many ways, forget what they "had" to remember. This seems to be quite a serious problem to me because people are given the opportunity to be lazy, and simply forget whatever they likely should remember. The old saying goes... "You don't use it, you lose it," and this applies to all functions of the mind, from memory to motor-function. The less people use their memory, the less active it'll be, but there's another issue with memory I haven't gotten to.

Limitations of memory. Think about it. Why would people want to "lifelog" anyway? What do they have to gain? I, perhaps rudely, assumed that these individuals were too "lazy" to remember things, so they just logged them, however, this may be a counteraction to the faultiness of the human memory, and all it's complicated misgivings, misunderstandings, and general haze. Perhaps these individuals are simply attending to the limitation of memory by logging their lives. But this limitation isn't detrimental as far as I'm concerned. Having a "human" memory doesn't entail perfection. That's something the memory doesn't promise, and this is okay, even though it's bloody inconvenient at times, sure. In all honesty, I'm just tempted to ask if people even find being people acceptable. I hope this makes sense for readers, but to rephrase, why do people have such an issue with their limitations? Why is a faulty memory, after hundreds, thousands of years, do we just now want to push back against our imperfect memories? Is it because we now have the technology to give us a piggy-pack ride while we try to remember? Technology and machines certainly make this process much less difficult for us, but in no way will it ever be authentic. Maybe I'm moving in circles here, since I'm also a firm believer in journaling, which is, ironically, a technology man uses to remember, or reflect, but the main problem I see here is that, whether it's through technology, logging, typing, etc., or down on paper, there's still the limitation of what our mind has retained and can spout off while "recording" the memories from our minds. No doubt something is lost every time. That can't be helped, but now I'm thinking of images and other forms of media, which capture image-by-image, the memory. How do we even think about memory? How do we define it? Here we go...

So memory is essentially "storing and remembering information." Does thinking about it this way help unpack Thompson's meaning in "digital memory"?

It seems that Thompson is essentially creating an argument in his book that man and machine can work together for mutual benefit. He begins this idea talking about man versus machine online chess games, and then continues through the next five chapters exploring, in a somewhat optimistic way, the workings of human tools and their connection to the human mind, how machine and man aren't all that different in terms of how they move through time and utilize one another, if that makes an ounce of sense.

NOVEMBER 12, 2018 (Farhad Manjoo 1)

NOVEMBER 12, 2018 BLOG POST
True Enough by Farhad Manjoo

Manjoo's book has inspired quite a bit of thinking from me over the last few days. Of course, plenty of what he's arguing I'd considered before in loose terms, but his extensions have proven to be particularly eye-opening and rewarding for the sake of pragmatic conversation. I was primarily focused on aspects and implications of globalization, which he discusses in the introduction. Along with that aspect, I found myself drawn to inherent biases, which he discusses in some depth between the end of chapter one and chapter two. Lastly, in chapter one, Manjoo discusses facts, the topic of the book, of course, and different versions of the truth as we've come to understand them. For me this brings about a few philosophical protestations circling what, conversationally, we've allowed to become the truth in relation to the Internet and the globalized connections we've established.

Globalization is a disturbing conception, I think, and although I am inclined to acknowledge how important it is that the globe be connected this way, I also fear it's consequences, the consequences of, how shall I say, "too many opinions." Think about science for a moment, and the importance of empiricism for proving that we've made a repeatable and consistent discovery. Globalization, in these terms, is essential for the success of mankind. The more thoughts on this matter, the more opportunities to compare notes for the progression of man, the better off one would think he would be as a species, right? Manjoo, in the introduction, addresses this point saying that people, closer together through globalization, don't debate and argue issues of the globe, but they actually just break down and argue over the facts. No headway can be made by arguing over the facts, and if it can, please tell me how that's possible.

But, back to my point that "comparing notes," so to speak, would be amazingly useful for mankind. The more minds the better, yes? No. Unfortunately, that's only theoretically speaking, that comparing notes would be helpful for mankind, kind of the same way people think about Marx's communism, where theoretically, it's a wonderful idea, but upon closer inspection and when the immoral people, as this is their nature, are added to the mix communism is a nightmare, depending on many factors, of course, but for the sake of illustration, I'm certain you're following me.

The problem with globalization is all about perspective and human nature, that is, pride, etc. Think about, for instance, an American scientist comparing notes with a German scientist. Let's say they both go about studying cellular meiosis using a different method but have a relatively similar result. According to Manjoo, rather than discussing the result and the factors utilized to achieve this result on either side, an argument would occur about the differing methodologies, and I'm certain this would be rooted in an element of pride on either side, that is, who developed the more effective method. Perhaps this is what Manjoo means, but this is how I've thought about it.

In philosophy, there are three "forms" of truth. They are coherence theory, correspondence theory, and consensus theory, which is the one I'll focus on this time. Consensus theory of truth probably explains itself. It basically suggests that because so many individuals observe the same thing in the same way, say a tree is purple, for example, then that must be the truth. Therefore, in that example, the tree would be determined to be purple, which seems unlikely if you ask me. My point in bringing up the consensus theory of truth is to address Manjoo's thoughts on information spreading through the Internet, and how those pieces of information somehow earn credibility for the sake of the "real-life" conversations that are occurring as a result of that information. So how do we decide the truth when we enter into these conversations? How do we discern fact from non-fact? Philosophers have been asking those questions since the dawn of time, but in relation to the Internet, it probably comes down to a few factors including persuasion, research, and perhaps, as I said before, consensus, ruefully misinformed consensus, ignorance.

Now! The problem of inherent biases, also popularly thought of in science, is mentioned by Manjoo is chapters one and two. He explains that despite globalization, the surplus of perspectives and opinions that differ from our own, we prefer to stay in our niche, where our own thoughts and opinions are reinforced, essentially, by seeking similar-minded individuals or opinions. He says that we basically read what we want to read to hear what we want to hear, and we'll stay comfortable in a global Internet community where every opportunity you'd have to branch away from your comfort to see from a different perspective is declined. So globalization... is it helpful? or is it simply reinforcing some notions of individualism by proving time and time again that it's "too loud" with opinion and it'll perpetually be rudely debating facts rather than solving any global issues.

NOVEMBER 5, 2018 (Eli Pariser 2)

NOVEMBER 5, 2018 BLOG POST
The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser

The "filter bubble," according to Pariser, begins to seem somewhat inescapable in the last few chapters of his book. He implies that the steps of personalization stretch beyond just the internet into the "real" world, where it imparts itself by doubling reality with virtualization. This prospect, at least from my perspective, is again, somewhat alarming to say the least. Pariser is essentially informing us that the "filter bubble" has a mighty potential to be inescapable, the world of personalization and, like I mentioned in my last post, predictability. I find this confining, and Pariser would agree.

For fear of being identified as a "technological heathen," I'll avoid drawing any unreasonable conclusions about the dangers of the Internet. I'll leave that task to Pariser, who identifies that the internet is both a breeder of "new ideas and styles and themes," but also a place where fundamental communication, moral, and humanistic "rules" are tested. Please feel free to call me out for these observations, but I find that "rules" truly means something to "institutionalized" really, and for the sake of the argument I'll venture forth assuming that these "rules" are just standards, rules of the Consensus Truth from modern philosophy that "most" people agree on. Navigating the world of language is difficult enough without having its borders attacked by the Internet's tests.

Couldn't an individual argue that the Internet has rewired our minds? Couldn't that same individual argue that it's changed our moral systems? our systems of thinking? and our what define as my previously mentioned "standard" (if there ever was one)? The Internet, and "filter bubble," to tie Pariser into this conversation, is dangerous, a realm that should be closely monitored when looping back around to personalization. Think about privacy, the way filtering systems have an apparent "knowledge" of what we desire, and therefore confine us within the walls of what it "thinks" we desire, and need. We've gone from being free and desire-less to being confined in the prison of unnecessary desires and needs in the form of personalized Internet experience.

Alarming indeed...

If you're feeling adventurous, please continue reading. If not, please turn back. You've been warned.

Now I'm interested in dissecting our conceptions of reality in relation to this "filter bubble" nonsense, that is, I don't consider the theory nonsense, just the fact that it should exist in the first place boxing users in with their own desires, or needs, or greed, and so on and so forth, as Joyce would say.

Now I, for one, do not want to live in a world where that world is essentially "tailored" to me, and I feel that this is what the personalized Internet experience is generating for users. The burden of experiencing the unexpected or the "inconvenient" becomes an anomaly when your world has been composed for the sole purpose of pleasing you and making your life as simple and pleasant as possible. That is no life at all, in fact, that's stripping down life to some Nietzschean illusion, a pointlessly easy existence governed by you, the center of your apparent reality. I protest this on all levels of the argument, that is, the argument that personalization is "helping" people, or providing them with a "user-friendly" experience. These programs, and arguably virtual reality, paint life a certain, very unattractively easy way. It's like taking a notoriously unattractive image and putting make-up on it for the sake of making it seem more attractive. Unfortunately, life is a "notoriously attractive image," as I so aptly put it, and it won't grow any more attractive while we distract ourselves with a false sense of pleasure derived from an easy, personalized reality. Indeed, not only is personalization removing a fundamental component of life, the difficulty, but it's also swallowing users into the void of "ease," where problems, like having to Google a pair of shoes you like, don't exist, because that same pair of shoes is already being advertised on the side-pane of your computer.

NOVEMBER "4", 2018 (Poster Reflection)

NOVEMBER "4", 2018 BLOG POST
Poster Reflection

This reflection was supposed to be posted yesterday evening, but unfortunately I was still getting my footing from an adventure that occurred over the weekend. Sincerest apologies, Professor Downs.

The process of creating my (e-) poster was a laborious one, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed, as it assisted in further refining my critical photo essay topic. I wanted the poster to first challenge all notions of a poster that I had encountered before, and second, to truly reflect where my mind is at in relation to this class's final project. I mentioned in my previous critical photo essay post that I was interested in pursuing a connection between technology (technological communication) and philosophy, a subject near and dear to my inquiring heart. I began refining my critical photo essay topic per the advise of Professor Downs, who graciously pointed me to a particular facet of technology, that is, the communicative aspect. I further refined this topic, as I mentioned, through the process of composing my (e-) poster, which I hope went over well with audience members.

I identified a personal interest with the communication utilized on social media, more specifically, for Instagram, which I've been separated from for a little less than a month now. It's a liberating experience and I highly recommend escaping when you find the motivation. However, my fixation on Instagram did not decrease with the amount of time I spent away from it, the contrary, in fact, and I optimistically, and somewhat doubtfully, honed in my concentration on Noam Chomsky, Peter Frederick Strawson, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosophers that I had only scarcely encountered prior to the creation of my poster.

So, indeed, the composition process was a learning experience for me just like I hoped it would be for viewers after it was completed. My first order of business was setting a background that instantaneously suggest "PHILOSOPHY," and "The Thinker" statue provided that effect for me. Rather haphazardly, I was able to set the poster background on the word document. I then took to the task of determining which color was the most aesthetic for my "little information boxes." A light shade of red seemed pleasant enough, and then I supplemented a light blue to develop a contrast to go along with "The Thinker." I picked three pictures, one for each philosopher, and then used a filter widget on Word to make them slightly more "epic" looking. You  may notice that they all appear to be somewhat facing their quotes in the boxes to the right of them. This was, indeed, deliberate.

I thought I would tie in the Instagram idea visually, so I searched the Internet for a "like badge" and then proceeded to apply this in various places around the poster, as to congeal it. I'm uncertain if this was effective at accomplishing my purpose. Then I isolated some quotes from each philosopher and played the "close-your-eyes-and-point" game to choose the quotes. I followed each quote with an idea, a question, related to the communicative thought behind the quote.

Aside from these aspects of the process, it was somewhat enjoyable design-wise, and I admit freely and openly that I know little about design. I am, however, an "adept" eye for aesthetic. Enjoy.

NOVEMBER 3, 2018 (Poster)

OCTOBER 29, 2018 (Eli Pariser 1)

OCTOBER 29, 2018 BLOG POST
The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser

Pariser's opening chapters seem to be more personal to him, recounting his experience with social media and reflecting on how the internet has become somewhat more "personalized" to his tastes, desires, and interests. This prospect I find absolutely alarming in the same way I find "predictive" texting annoying. It seems to me that computers, or individuals that generate computers and run them behind the scenes, are also influenced by businessmen, but that's not the point I'm chasing here. I'm thinking that, while having a personalized internet experience saves time and truly shows us what we "want" to see, it also limits us to our tastes, desires, and interests. Does this limitation strike anyone else as being somewhat odd? Doesn't being exposed to things we don't care for round us out more effectively than being surrounded by our predilections?

There is a strong possibility that my "GRE brain" is still operating at a high "argumentative" capacity, and I'm tempted to shred any argument that dares stand in my path. But back to Pariser's exploration on the personalized internet experience. Consider what this means for humanity. Reflect for just a second on what predictive functions in computers could mean for us. It means laziness, in short. It means we are given the opportunity to think less because the computer can predict what we would like to say or think or desire next. No need to take the extra step and free-think when "predictive" text already knows what word we're looking for among hundreds. The same goes for what Pariser is examining. Creating a personalized internet experience limits our exigency to think. Am I employing this word correctly? Continuing the project of expanding my vocabulary per the unintentional inspiration of the GRE.

Pariser goes on in Chapter three discussing issues with the filter bubble. He helps readers understand this phenomenon by creating an analogy with Adderall. This almost appears to me to be an examination of priority, in some ways. As in, he'd have us consider that the filter bubble, like Adderall, prevents users from growing distracted by honing in our attention on what could be considered, for the sake of simplicity, important. This sounds like an echo of priority, and the question becomes, what do we deem important? Pariser has an answer with an implication. He argues that either extreme has a poor outcome. Either results in some form of one-track thinking process that cancels out creativity, which in turn, closes down opportunities for the development of fresh, new ideas and insights.

Reflecting back upon internet personalization, I'm thinking about Pariser's terms, that is, the possibility that we should be more concerned with people than with the internet. It's easy to blame the internet for "personalizing" itself to our needs, and stripping us of the ability to think for ourselves, but the truth is that it's only designed that way with economic intent by people. I think Pariser delves into this a little in the last few chapters, skimmed them quickly, drawing from memory. So the problem of trust is not with the personalized internet, but with people, again. Predictable, perhaps. But the internet only serves as a powerful, intelligent functioning software that quickly jumps between extremes depending on who "possess" the software, or has influence over it. This may be leading into a dialogue about artificial intelligence, but I'll spare you reader. Look up Elon Musk and tell my your thoughts. We'll chat about it over coffee, although it may take a while.

OCTOBER 22, 2018 (Seth Godin, Tom Goetz, and Anne Frances Wysocki)

OCTOBER 22, 2018 BLOG POST
Break (Video) By Seth Godin
Redesigning Medical Data By Tom Goetz
Sticky Embrace of Beauty By Anne Wysocki

In order to keep every aspect of this post reasonably digestible I'll first outline a few terms that I want to focus on related to the videos and reading. I'd like to focus on accountability, the connection of form with content, elemental layouts, the association of bodily sensation with conceptual ability, the aesthetics of Kant, pleasure, judgment, and harmonization. Hopefully some of these terms sound fairly familiar, that is, they all come from the videos and reading assignment.

Professor Downs must have somehow been aware of my deep affection for Immanuel Kant and German philosophy. Wysocki's piece started out with some suggestions regarding the agency of visual elements and the connection of form with content. Agency, according to most philosophers, is a type of recognition that an entity has the ability to act and manifest some form of change. It's almost like a sense of awareness that an individual can possess in regards to their environment or their mind, for example. Now how does agency exist in relation to visual elements? What Wysocki is suggesting is that visual elements have a sense of agency, that is, they have the ability to enact change, or influence the capacity to act. I've understood this by thinking about how something visual can influence people, even from a thinking standpoint. Visual versus nonvisual as it pertains to influencing thought or change in people engaging with it on any number of levels from emotions, to associations, to memories, to any other function that has the possibility to enact change.

Now on to the connection of form with content. An admittedly short time ago I was enrolled in a class that explored the facets and rabbit-holes of poetry. This class was one of the only ones to keep me up at night staring at the ceiling. I thought about poetry on many levels, as the instructor hoped, somewhat corrupting my view of words forever. It was a beautiful corruption, and one that I often reflect on fondly, thinking of how poetry content and form are always dancing together. Back to images and information sharing, how do we think about form and content connection?

Earlier in the semester we discussed this in class. Form and content can play together for maximum conveying potential, to word it quite inarticulately. It's audience consideration on one end, and it's a writer/speaker's keen observation and knowledge of his subject on the other. Knowing how to maximize effectiveness to an audience is key when thinking of form and content. What are you attempting to convey? Why? How?

She writes, "Form is itself always a set of structuring principles with different forms growing out of and reproducing different but specific values" (159). Wysocki suggests that form is "...a set of structured principles..." that relate to values. Content, however, in my terms, circles the meaning, the meaning behind those values and principles, what they suggest and what they hope to achieve in terms of engaging audience for the sake of inspiring change or generating consideration, evaluation.

Wysocki then ventures into the writings of Kant, a charming old friend of mine. She outlines the division of three philosophy studies established by Kant.
      1. The Cognitive: study of nature
      2. The Ethical: study of morals
      3. The Aesthetic: study of tastes and aesthetic
She bridges the gap by writing, "...Kant argues that, when we have a sense of pleasure, the faculty to judgment is what allows us to join the pleasure to the realm of universal design" (161). So aesthetic elements arrive from the sense of pleasure that is reasoned and rationalized using judgment, or recognition that something we observe provides pleasure for us. The pleasure we feel arrives from the portions of our experience that "...fit what is universal," which I understand to mean a form of standard for what we deem pleasurable to observe.

The diagram above illustrates this concept based on the writings of Kant.

Wysocki continues by writing, "When we see an object that is formed according to universal structures, then the particular and the universal are harmonized, the beauty is created" (162). It's important to note her distinction between the particular, the unique, and the universal, the standard. When we find alignment of these too, she writes, we achieve the highest form of feeling pleasure, the feeling of observing beauty through judgment, or recognition, to put it in Wysocki's terms. So back to the three divisions in philosophy, according to Kant. The concept of nature, that is, the cognitive study of nature and the judgment established in regards to beauty, the aesthetic study of tastes and aesthetics connect to the final, far-left side of the diagram, where the ethical study of morals rests. Wysocki has connected all three Kantian divisions of philosophy through the common thread of natural conception, human moral decision-making, and the existence of values.

I hope I understood that correctly, but moving on briefly to the two videos of Godin and Goetz. I discovered that the major theme of these two videos was accountability, which Godin discusses when connecting people to "broken things," his goal being to "...unbreak things that are broken." And Goetz appears to be discussing accountability in terms of information sharing, which he highlights along with the notion of decision-making. He intelligently said, "People know what they're supposed to be doing, but they don't do it," which speaks to some true and disappointing human psychology. But his point, if I'm not mistaken, is that information, decision-making, and accountability, paired with innovation and ingenuity, yield the most effective results in relation to the patients being treated by medical professionals. I may have to watch again more closely, but I was most fascinated by Wysocki's reexamination of Kant's writings.

OCTOBER 18, 2018 (CPE Proposal)

OCTOBER 18, 2018 BLOG POST
Critical Photo Essay Proposal & Annotated Bibliography

The subject of my critical photo essay assignment, although not pinned down fully, circles the interwoven nature of philosophy and technological literacy. My research question is framed somewhat broadly, but will narrow as I begin research for this project.

RESEARCH QUESTION:
How does technological literacy engage classical and modern philosophical thought?

This conversation is interesting to me for a variety of reasons, but the largest is that the philosophical components of technological literacy have direct implications with human cognitive function. Technology is essentially rewiring our brains, and with it our conceptions of philosophy in the ways it had always been thought of previously. From writing to pixels, as Bernhardt wrote, technology has impacted human thought and the method by which we think. I'd like to examine what kind of problems this could mean for society, culture, and humanity in general. I'd also like to criticize theories about possible positive and negative effects of technology on philosophical thought. At the base-level though, I'm most curious about how philosophy and digital rhetoric play together.

To study this research question, I'll begin broadly by reading and exploring a variety of mediums through which scholars and theorists have already engaged this idea. My reading will catch me up with research that's already been done in relation to this pair, philosophy and technological literacy.

Beyond that, I'm uncertain about what forms of research I could investigate. Perhaps I could simply reflect on my experiences with technology, and consider ways that it has shifted or altered the states of my mind when theorizing or making decisions. Self-reflection is a particularly powerful tool when exploring research possibilities, although not excessively.

Annotated Bibliography

1. Feenberg A. (2006) "What Is Philosophy of Technology?". In: Dakers J.R. (eds) Defining Technological Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

This source, as is indicated by the title, focuses on the major themes apparent in technological studies, not to be confused with scientific studies, that pertain to philosophy. The authors examine technology from a philosophical standpoint, highlighting the important metaphysical and epistemological details that circle technology utilization and development in terms of humanity.

2. Hickman, Larry A. (2001) "Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture: Putting Pragmatism to Work". Indiana University Press, 2001. Indiana.

Engages philosophical thinking methods in response to a modern age of technology, where its usage has been embedded in society's culture with philosophical implications. This source focuses on culture and philosophy, where technology and culture are tied together firmly, and technology is somewhat depended on for culture, where this is viewed as a serious problem.

3. Kateb, George. “Technology and Philosophy.” Social Research, vol. 64, no. 3, 1997, pp. 1225–1246. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Although somewhat outdated, this source focuses on defining technology in relation to philosophy more than the others. Again, I suggest that it's indeed, outdated, but the perspective is valuable, from a standpoint of 1997, when technology, at least computer technology, was still being determined and future applications were mostly uncertain. Kateb also ties in philosophy by exploring modes of philosophical thought from humans of the time, during the exploration and application of technology, before a certain level of dependency was acknowledged or even existent. 

4. Mitcham, Carl. "Thinking Through Technology: The Path Between Engineering and Philosophy". The University of Chicago Press, 1994. Chicago, 1994.

Another dated perspective, but Mitcham wrote an entire book on the subject of weaving technology, in its many components, to philosophy. Considering the building blocks of technology, this book seems to fall into the agreeable notion that philosophy and many other "cogs" make up technology as a whole influence on mankind and our development. Thinking about it this way, back in 1994, was effective for thinking ahead, when the philosophy piece of the technology puzzle was still seemingly positive in nature.

5. Winner, Langdon. "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology". Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 18 No. 3, Summer 1993 362-378, 1993.

To keep the perspectives and lenses on this subject broad, I thought it best to extend application of these two subjects into the social realm, where societal and cultural impacts could have the most severe consequences for the separation of philosophy and technology, although the only reason the two are paired here is because it's a case for social constructivism rather than for why philosophy and technology are married. It's an examination of technology through a philosophical lens to better understand what social impact it may be having on humanity.

OCTOBER 15, 2018 (Scott McCloud 3)

OCTOBER 15, 2018 BLOG POST
Understanding Comics By Scott McCloud

In this segment of the reading, I found myself caught up in the color theories of Chapter 8. McCloud discusses how colors affect our perceptions of the images we observe, that is, they enhance our ability to separate physical forms more effectively than images that are just black and white.

This is interesting for a variety of reasons, and I'm inclined to think of how color usage is often symbolic, or perhaps not often, but it has the potential for that intended purpose. Think of country flags, for instance. The colors always mean something, that is, the blood from wars, etc. Now think about how colors typically lead us to a string of associations. McCloud's discussion leads us to many interesting follow-up questions including how the ways we think about color affect our perceptions and associations of visually-informative texts.

Color could also be thought, at least in reference to comics, as an element that adds perspective and complications to images that are originally black and white. The perspective change allows us a certain level of freedom in aligning our perceptions of a colored visual expression.

Color grabs attention. This is why it's utilized in technology and business settings. Color could be said to have a profound affect on human beings, that is, filling our visual experience and complicating our collective reality.

Take a look at this image. Think about how the color on the far left evokes something. Does it feel closer to what we'd see if we were there with those clouds in person? Is our experience colorful only for the reason that we evolved to see color for the purpose of better avoiding predators and poisonous berries? That may be somewhat tangent to my point.

Now let's dive into Chapter 7, which I deliberately put off until now because of an eager sense of philosophical inquiry. The definition of art is an impossible definition, but it helps to begin with a series of terms, like intention, expression, creativity, emotion, beauty. Although, beauty is a typical component of art but not required for art.

Take Matisse, for example, his painting "Woman with Hat," which he painted in 1905. Is this painting necessarily beautiful? Does it elicit a type of emotion? Familiarity? I bring this painting up for a variety of personal reasons but my point is that the impossibility of this painting is a representation of the impossibility of defining art. It's like trying to define life.

Art explores our past experiences and our inner emotional states. Is it possible to suggest that art is a replica of the human mind? An expressive force of the inner conscious or subconscious.

Either way, McCloud's six steps are not a foolproof method of explaining how art is created. I protest this simply because I'm more inclined to follow Hegel, who focused, like Kenneth Burke, on symbols in art, what a piece of art is attempting to evoke in terms of its symbolic relevance or meaning.

Hegel argues that art is "...a mode of absolute spirit...," a type of "beautiful ideal" that humans strive for in expression. This plays with intention, expression, creativity, and has the potential of touching emotion and elements of beauty. Hegel thought that beauty was the ideal for creative expression, that is, beauty was the goal of art, although, like I previously mentioned, art doesn't have to be beautiful.

Back to McCloud though. He writes, "...any human activity which doesn't grow out of either our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction" (164). This is McCloud's definition of art apparently, which I protest as well. Anyone is capable of creating art, but I'm tempted to keep my focus on intention and creativity. Couldn't survival be thought of as a form of art? An expression of life? What about reproduction? This reminds me of an essay by Walter Benjamin, who wrote about how technology has had an impact on the "reproducability of art." He means to say that technology has allowed us to experience art, previously a "one-time experience," as many times as we like. It takes away the expression and the luxury of what humans are meant to feel or think in response to art.

OCTOBER 7, 2018 (Scott McCloud 2)

OCTOBER 7, 2018 BLOG POST
Understanding Comics By Scott McCloud

In this reading I found that the major idea sticking out was in Chapter 6, the concept of words versus pictures, which is what we've been analyzing all through this course. I'll spend some time elaborating on my thoughts about this as well as what McCloud has to offer.

Let's first take a look at this image from the text.

The power of pictures, according to McCloud, is a location to begin exploring the broad uses of images in relation to text, that is, text can work or expand alongside pictures. McCloud, in this image, seems to be explaining that once the base-level meaning is there with the employment of an image, or a visually-informative piece of rhetoric, the words can fill extra gaps. Essentially, the usage of words is tripled when the picture is used to illustrate something that words would require much more work to accomplish.

Think of famous pieces or art, or the New York School of Poetry, where art and writing, for the sake of creativity, were intertwined. The image proceeds the words, and the words are given limitless potential in response to the work the image has already done in terms of meaning and communication.

The New York School of Poetry was headed by several figures including John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. This poetry movement focused on examining the mundane, a type of later modernity. The most interesting thing about this school of poetry was that these poets had plenty of interaction and kin-work with painters, creators of images. The old stories go that painters would come hang out with the poets and paint. As a result, the poets would then begin to try to capture the painting with poetry, and the possibilities of interpretation, communication, and intention were expanded immensely by the purely subjective nature of images as they connect with words.

Consider what McCloud writes about the opposite end of the spectrum, when words are used as the basis of meaning and images follow.

So words "...lock in the 'meaning' of a sequence...," he writes. Words have that power, the power to generate meaning on a level above what we purely observe with our eyes. The visual component of words (which I feel is entirely contradictory idea, that words themselves have visually-informative elements that work quite subconsciously for humans) is exclusively surrounding images that we create in our mind in response to our comprehension of the words themselves.

Pictures can only enhance words, similarly to the enhancement of pictures through words. It appears the relationship between the two is more complex than I formerly realized, that is, the two seem to play nicely together, and I'm wondering what the opposite would look like, for example, when an excellent book has been made into a movie and everyone thinks the movie is horrific as it attempts to portray the book. The words in this case hold more meaning, and the meaning that is attempting to be created by visual elements, the movie, is falling short of the base-line clarity of the words. Perhaps commenting individuals can help me out with this befuddling question. Perhaps it's not befuddling at all, and I'm just sleep-deprived like everyone else.

Lastly, I'd like to begin thinking about the power difference between using images or words. What type of power do words have that images lack? And opposite? What type of power does an image have the words could never have? They say "a picture is worth a thousand words," but think about how limited we'd be if we only had images to communicate. I suppose that's how primitive man communicated and he got on just fine, but the potential for our intellectual capacity is limitless with both words and images. When they play together nicely it's an unstoppable force of creating meaning and expanding the implications for humanity.

OCTOBER 4, 2018 (AV SHORT)

OCTOBER 1, 2018 (Scott McCloud)

OCTOBER 1, 2018 BLOG POST
Understanding Comics By Scott McCloud

This is in the top five most fascinatingly composed books I've encountered in my academic career. Wonderfully entertaining to read, and interesting to examine. With all compliments aside, I'd like to begin dissecting some of what McCloud is playing at with his book.

Early in the second chapter, McCloud defines icons as "...any image used to represent a person, place, thing, or idea," where the word "symbol" fits into a "...category of icon[s]..." (27). Thinking about icons for a moment, I'm tempted to run back to Kenneth Burke (seems to be a common pattern). Burke said we assign meaning to symbols, and now McCloud is suggesting that symbols fit into a broader category of icons. Based on the diagnostic examination provided by McCloud, I'm tempted to ask about the meaning behind icons, that is by McCloud's definition, representational of something that has already been assigned meaning. Perhaps now we can think that Burke's thoughts on meaning-making can be pinned to a broader definition of what McCloud is playing with here.

Meaning -> Symbols -> Icons -> Conceptions/Ideas (?)
(Perhaps someone can help me with this diagram, what goes where according to McCloud?)

McCloud, on page thirty, examines the concept of simplification briefly. Simplification is particularly effective when it comes to maintain an audience. People generally prefer the simple over the more sophisticated, easier comprehension, easier response. Now, when people lose the message they lose interest and stop listening. For the sake of effective rhetoric, knowing thy audience is key. Audience echoes purpose, that is, what a message is meant to say to an audience in a contextual situation. Take McCloud for example, who thought it most effective to make a comic book about comic books. Brilliant, I say. He took into account his audience, perhaps obsessively, and began to dissect the comic book through the medium of an individual who would be writing a comic book that wasn't about comic books. Audience consideration, evaluation, and mediation. McCloud also played with an entirely different medium from what students of comic books are accustomed to. It's scholarly theory, an alternative form of rhetoric. It's playing with form and content, examining a subject through the lens and pen of that subject.

On page thirty-six I began to think quite deeply. For viewing pleasure I've attached it below.

Simply thinking about this concept is absolutely fascinating, that is, the science behind how we think of others, based on what we visualize, and how we think of ourselves, visually. We see our own face an innumerable amount of times, yet we only think of a "...sketchy arrangement..." when we try to reflect on our own face in a state of self-awareness. Now this psychology is positively intriguing.

Thinking of solipsism as it relates to comic books. How does it relate to comic books? Perhaps McCloud toys with reality so much in his explanation of comic books that it begins to feel like some kind of existential or solipsistic statement, that is, the little narrator in glasses is always warping his reality how he needs to for the most effective explanation of comic books and visual components of rhetorical thinking, for students, I mean.

Beyond that, consider the following visual from page forty-six.

This visual is helpful for understanding some "big picture" ideas with McCloud. He's simplified it, just like he said he would so people understand it. This image speaks for itself, the spectrum he's created between the complex and the simple, the realistic and the iconic, the objective and the subjective, and the specific versus the universal. Perhaps it's too assumptive, but I hypothesize that every image we encounter falls somewhere on this spectrum. It's all dependent on what the image is attempting to accomplish, as a visually informative rhetorical image. Again, perhaps this is too assumptive, but I also hypothesize that all images are rhetorical whether that's a picture of four blue squares or La Gioconda. It's subjective really, and it always has purpose.

SEPTEMBER 24, 2018 (Dennis Baron and Anne Wysocki)

September 24, 2018 BLOG POST
"From Pencils to Pixels" By Dennis Baron
"Blinded by the Letter" By Anne Wysocki and Johndon Johnson-Eilola

Baron opens his essay by sharing a personal anecdote about the transition of writing to typing and typing back to writing. He explained that he found the process of hand-writing a memo difficult in light of the fact that it was clunky and somewhat less "flexible" than digitized text. This has several alarming implications for me as a reader because I can relate with that to some extent.

He continues by writing about how literacy technology "...creat[es] new forms and new possibilities for communication" (16). I'm inclined to agree with him that literacy is always changing, as it's a dynamic process. However, I want to examine what dangers lurk behind us when we begin depending on technologies that are impossibly fraudulent at times. The potential for fraud, differentiating it from the truth, and generally the ill-will of people who have reigns on this technology are terrifying to consider, especially when the globe is exposed to this information, our children mainly, and its influence is all to powerful.

Perhaps that's dramatic, but my concern must seem reasonable. Consider what Jay said in his comment on my last post. He wrote, "Is it still writing if I use my computer?" Fair question, and one that warrants the logic of semantics when it comes to the composition process. How have we come to think about writing? Is it fair to call it "writing" anymore? Perhaps "typing" is a term we could better substitute in for it's ancestor, "writing."

But back to what I was discussing before, the potential for fraud. Baron's essay seems to suggest that with each development, the potential is greater and greater. And it slowly becomes a philosophical question: what is the bloody truth? Baron writes, "Not only must the new technology be accessible and useful, it must demonstrate its trustworthiness as well. So procedures for authentication and reliability must be developed before the new technology becomes fully accepted” (17). A new technology must demonstrate its trustworthiness because people are right to fear fraudulence through technologies they don't understand. Additionally, I run to a metaphor. Consider this digital literacy business, and think of it as a pond, a pond filled with alligators. The alligators represent fraud, and let me just say, the pond grows in size every time a new digital techology is available to the massive population of the globe. And with the growth of the pond comes more alligators, until we have a situation that sounds familiar, hackers, image fraud, the dark web, etc. And I want to take a moment to acknowledge the limitations of what I understand about this, but the web is a dangerous place, and literacy, by Wysocki's terms, is "...a cloud of sometimes contradictory nexus points among different positions. Literacy can be seen as not a skill, but a process of situating and resituating representations in social spaces” (367). It seems to me that literacy is somewhat unstable by Wysocki's terms, perhaps it's the word "contradictory" that makes me skeptical.

This brings me to the influence of these technologies on language and communication. Plate protested writing because he deemed it "unnatural" and "untrustworthy." Even he was afraid of the potential for distrust and fraudulence. It opens a world of communication and truly alters everything about the way we view ourselves, others, and the world. But I'm wondering about how I could relate Kenneth Burke back into the conversation. He suggested that meaning became symbols, and symbols became language, and language is impressionable in the face of ever-changing literacy technology. It trails all the way back, when we change the medium for language or communication we step back to the meaning-making and change it. We put it on the line by making meaning less concrete. This seems dangerous to me, especially when meaning-making for the masses of the world fall into the hands of some heinous individuals. Food for thought, and maybe I'm losing the feel for this post now.

I was reminded of Claude Lévi-Strauss while reading Baron's essay. He wrote Tristes Tropiques, which if anyone remembers from Literary Criticism was about how writing can be used to dominate and suppress populations. Writing is a powerful tool to have, and, of course, it's been used for evil. It makes this technology untrustworthy, which is why each new literacy technology must prove a certain level of validity before it's accepted by a population.

Plenty to consider, and Baron paints an alarming series of images about what technology could have in store for communication and every aspect of our lives beyond that. Communication is just the beginning.

SEPTEMBER 16, 2018 (Stephen Bernhardt and Anne Wysocki)

SEPTEMBER 16, 2018 BLOG POST
"Seeing the Text" By Stephen Bernhardt
"The Multimedia of Texts" By Anne Wysocki

Stephen Bernhardt speaks my language. I feel the premise of his essay surrounds breaking the convention of feeding students one form of writing and expecting purely non-visually informative compositions. Unfortunately for the educations systems there are many different types of persuasion and "rhetorical organization," as Bernhardt identifies it.

This terminology, "rhetorical organization," makes me want to analyze how Bernhardt defined it. Based on what I understand about rhetoric, I find this term linked with the persuasive elements of how we interpret text. Bernhardt writes, "

He seems to have a problem with the "conventional essay format," which rarely sees visual components. He writes, "A preoccupation with conventional essay format allows little attention to visual features. Instead of helping students learn to analyze a situation and determine an appropriate form, given a certain audience and purpose, many writing assignments merely exercise the same sort of writing week after week, introducing only topical variation” (77). He appears to be suggesting that rhetoric has foundations in determining the appropriate form for a persuasive composition, and depriving students of the opportunity to decide what form best suits the need of the composition, we're fundamentally teaching them nothing about what options they have for employing rhetoric to their advantage. I also find it somewhat perturbing that most educators exclusively assign non-visually informative compositions from students.

However, it's worth addressing the problem of non-visually informative texts being consistent, which is the aim of many educational systems, consistency. Consider in simple terms a high school English classroom, a place most familiar to me from being there as a student and a substitute teacher more recently. A high school English teacher assigns students an "project" rather than an "essay," and students can make a video, a poster, or some other form of presentation to demonstrate their knowledge about whatever book they've been reading. Let's say students are relatively creative and make some posters, a short film, one writes a song, another does a re-enactment from a scene in the text. Now, the problem of grading. At a high school level, where standards are rigorously enforced, the grading scheme can't always be based on effort, but on content. There are no standards for grading content. It's all up to the discretion of the teacher to assign grades to each of these nonlinear projects that students have worked on and composed. Consider the other teacher who assigns his/her students "essays" and not "projects." He/she takes away a bit of creative demonstration from the students, but the exchange is that they receive a pile of papers that A) use a consistent grading scale, B) all likely possess similar points, and C) can be graded based on a standard that has been applied to years and years of high school educators. Which is easier? Which is more expressive and entertaining? Which will stimulate students' interest most effectively?

Bernhardt writes, “…view the rhetoric of visual design as an evolving art” (75). So our understanding of subversive and alternative forms of rhetorical organization, at least in academia, is somewhat undeveloped at this point. Although, it is "evolving" as he says, that is, expressive modes are being explored everywhere and by rhetoricians across the globe. Even "animal rhetorical expression" is being explored as an avenue.

The main point to take away from this essay, in my opinion, is that it's unconventional to use visual features for conventional student compositions. The conventional essay is the preferred method, but this prevents students from learning how to experiment with form, purpose, and audience. It limits their expressive abilities and fits them into a margin. Persuasive elements come in a variety of forms and it doesn't end with Bernhardt's exploration of visual components.

Now, to address Wysocki. Her essay seemed to be like a form of style-guide for visual rhetoric, how "...visual elements and arrangements of a text perform persuasive work” (124). She outlines all the possibilities of using text, shapes, organization of pages, how they all play off of one another. Her detail is astounding, but the punchline from all that appears to be quite similar to what Bernhardt is suggesting, that visual aspects of text can be understood as being just as rhetorically effective for an audience as "conventional text." This rarely-explored avenue for persuasion features a composition process with just as much, if not more, specificity as to how the rhetorical effect is employed in relation to conventional forms of rhetorical persuasion, in modes ranging from organization to purpose to audience considerations. It all matters when employing rhetoric.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 (Walter Fisher)

SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 BLOG POST
"Narration as Human Communication" By Walter R. Fisher

Fisher's essay was interesting on many different levels, and I believe it was operating with pretenses in sociology and philosophy as he spent quite a bit of time discussing the human narrative experience and also what this experience means for the public. In one of many definitions aimed to help readers understand the significance of the narrative structure, Fisher writes, " The meaning and significance of life in all its social dimensions require the recognition of its narrative structure" (377). He suggests here that employing a narrative mode of consciousness, as the human rational human experience, holds a great deal of weight, that is, in order to derive meaning or significance from life we must recognize the narrative structure of life.

The idea of deriving meaning and significance from life makes me think of Kenneth Burke, who postulated that man is a "symbol-using" being. Burke, a rhetorical theorist, argued that humans use symbols to communicate and create them for meaning-making. Symbols like words, for example, hold meaning for us and allow us a somewhat flexible medium for the development of language, communication, and in many ways, the narrative social experience.

Human communication  and decision-making must be in argumentative form, Fisher's paradigm, follows the tradition of Aristotle's theory, what he calls The Rational World Paradigm, which surmises that humans are rational beings, that communication and decision-making are forms of argument, and that the world is filled with puzzles that can be solved through logic. But the specification that being rational is being learned is perhaps, in my opinion, the most important aspect of this ancient paradigm. Rationality comes from knowledge.

Fisher proposes another metaphor to represent human beings, what he calls homo narrans. He argues that narration is the master metaphor and follows Burke's definition of man as "symbol-employing." If I understand this master metaphor correctly, Fisher is suggesting that because every element of the human experience is subjective in the narrative, this metaphor becomes a type of lens we can look through to understand our own conceptions on a spectrum of logic and truth. This is a philosophical dilemma that Fisher proposes, but it seems sensical enough in terms of what implications follow the narrative experience through the social, political, theological, or other forms of the human experience that would engage decision-making or communication.

He writes, "The materials of the narrative paradigm are symbols, signs of consubstantiation, and good reasons, the communicative expressions of social reality" (383). Fisher indicates here that the narrative paradigm, his alternative view that human communication is in argumentative form, depends on human use of symbols to generate meaning, a similarity in substance or essence, and logical reasoning. This is Fisher's equation for understanding the narrative paradigm.

It seems important to note that the narrative experience is rooted in perspective, which has limitations for communication and the social world we occupy.

Towards that later part of the essay, he addresses public moral argument, which he argues has an underlying persuasive element. He discusses attributes of the most effective argumentative public moralist by suggesting that this individual acts as a counselor, and shares his/her narrative experience with the public using rationality and logic. In response, the public uses a specific set of criteria to determine what belief they choose to accept based on what these counselors argue. This can either inspire the public to action or inspire them to inaction. Fisher writes, "... public-social knowledge is to be found in the stories that we tell one another... to observe not only our differences, but also our commonalities, and in such observation we might be able to reform the notion of 'public'" (393).

SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 (Stanley Fish)

SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 BLOG POST
"Rhetoric" By Stanley Fish

I had a little bit of background information coming into this essay. I recall discussing Stanley Fish in one of my introductory writing classes with Professor Scott Parker. During class he mentioned a recent book by Fish titled "How to Write a Sentence," which was actually just a book of sentence workshop methods for the common writing student.

With the background information applied, I suppose I should probably begin to comment on Fish's essay about rhetoric. When I began reading, I found the epigraph interesting. The epigraph from John Milton's Paradise Lost seemed somewhat out of place, but once Fish went about explaining his selection I couldn't help but nod in appreciation. Milton was defining rhetoricians in the classical sense, that is, intelligent and manipulative conversationalists, or orators, perhaps. This tradition began with the Greeks, with the people before Socrates who did ask for payment to educate young people and to speak to crowds. Socrates didn't ask for payment for his speaking or his conversations with the young aristocracy. The difference here is that Socrates was interested in simply sharing his wisdom and the truths that he believed arrived from achieving that intellect. Although he himself was a brilliant rhetorician, it is believed, based on the dialogues of Plato, that he was not maliciously manipulative, i.e. he had no interest in stealing or cheating people. Socrates was even proven to be morally sound in his decision not to flee his execution in the second to last dialogue, Crito.

I suspect the assumption here was that manipulating others, in any way, was immoral, even if this was done with words, and not for any particular reason besides an intellectual challenge. Plato's Euthyphro demonstrates the Socratic Method, which I understand to be an cooperative, but argumentative educational dialogue between two people attempting to find a question's answer.

A few thinkers later and we arrive at Aristotle, who proposed that rhetoric is "the art of persuasion," which many people cling to for the sake of understanding rhetoric. I am tempted to take this quote at surface level, but I'm also tempted to ask what a person's definition of "persuasion" is, and how it may affect the way we view or think about rhetoric. Also, how do we define "art," and what does it mean to think of rhetoric as an "art"? Anyway, Aristotle, in Fish's essay, defines a difference between the Homo seriosus and the Homo rhetoricus. 

Aristotle defines Homo Seriosus, the Serious Man, as possessing "... a central self, an irreducible identity," while he defines Homo rhetoricus, the Rhetorical Man, as "... an actor" (127). What kinds of implications or misguided notions is Aristotle under when he defines a difference between these two types of men? Are all people not "serious" and "rhetorical" at the same time? Is being authentic and being an actor not something everyone does depending on the situation?

Continuing on in the reading, I'm tempted to explore the dilemma of manipulation when it comes to rhetoric. Is this a misunderstanding, or a fear from society? Rhetoric, in my terms, is a form of expression. All communication is a form of expression with some intended purpose. The purpose of rhetoric is too broad to refine, but I still view it as an expression. Now, rhetoricians are no necessarily manipulative, that is, verbally manipulative. It boils down to intention and presentation, like Aristotle's steps of rhetoric, invention, arrangement, and style. With persuasive ability comes a certain amount of desire, which rhetoric promises delivery from. Rhetoric is built on persuasion, but it also deals widely in influence, and we see full circle that influence creates persuasion and rhetoric can construct its own tower, giving the rhetorician a place on top.