Archive for January, 2009
Notes for our presentation today
Prepared by Andy and me: XKCD: I’m Not an Idiot Langdon Winner’s blog essays on the philosophy of technology 1. What does Winner mean by “technological somnambulism” (10)? 2. Why is Winner’s book still so relevant? Why haven’t we moved beyond some of the basic questions he’s asked? 3. His question, not as rhetorical as [...]
what are our moral responsibilities regarding technology?
In The Whale and the Reactor, Langdon Winner notes that our culture has severely limited the moral questions that have salience when it comes to technology. As a society, we limit our questions to issues of public safety and health; harm to resources, the environment, or wildlife; and exaggerated social stresses. These concerns are of [...]
revisiting the rhetorical situation
(We’re [re]reading Bitzer and Vatz for our 602 course on teaching composition. I wrote about these articles before here) In “The Rhetorical Situation,” Lloyd Bitzer makes an interesting statement about utopia: In the best of all possible worlds, there would be communication perhaps, but no rhetoric — since exigences would not arise. In our real [...]
why we’re almost always talking about the wrong things when we talk about sex
As you may be aware, Portland Mayor Sam Adams is under some flack for lying and then admitting about having sex with an 18-year-old. He denied the affair during his campaign, became the first openly gay mayor of a U.S. city the size of Portland, and then this week admitted to the affair. You know [...]
speaking of digital vs. print
I too am bothered by College Composition and Communication‘s decision to put only excerpts to the Re-Visions and Review essays in the print issue and to put the full text online. Go to Deb’s post for a great discussion about the decision to do so. I love the digital, but prefer print for sustained academic [...]
English 30 reflections post #2
We spent today in the library, where my students checked out their Sony e-book Readers for the term and were “orientated” to them. Largely uneventful, but my students are already asking questions about the functionality of the device. One student asked if he could write notes or highlight using the Reader. Nope, not with this [...]
yo comments are whack!
notes from the interblags: literacy, dangerous courses, change.gov
• The NEA reports that reading literature is on the rise. Millie Davis summarizes: This week the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reported the first rise in the number of adults reading literature since they began their survey in 1982. In fact, 16.6 million more adults reported reading literature (novels and short stories, plays, [...]
English 30 reflections post #1
This term, as I’ve discussed a bit before, I’m teaching Honors Rhetoric and Composition1 as part of the University’s project with Sony. We are checking out Sony’s ebook Reader and doing most of our course’s readings on this — either in ebook format or in pdf format. Students will be researchers in the project as [...]
join the discussion on collaboration
The Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) is hosting a discussion on collaboration on their blog that looks pretty interesting. Thought I’d let readers know in case they want to weigh in and collaborate.
