All that worrying for nothing

Attempting to answer Inman’s question of “What worries you about the computers and writing community, and why does it worry you?” has really helped me to work through some of my stereotyping of technology as cold and impersonal. I entered this class with serious concerns about the potential for technology to overwhelm the quality personal interchanges that take place in the classroom and make our pedagogy so successful.

But I was heartened to read Inman’s explanation of “the cyborg era” that he uses to explain our current techno-culture. Among the characteristics he notes are a foregrounding of individuals, and adaptability of technology for individuals’ purposes, an emphasis on the context in which technology operates, and the importance of activism by a cyborg.

And then, I was further encouraged in comparing these characteristics to James Herrick’s classic definition of rhetoric. His description of rhetoric is that it is: planned, adapted to an audience, shaped by human motives, responsive to a situation, and persuasion-seeking. I was surprised to find so many common links between rhetoric and technology! This lead me to consider whether the use of technology to foster rhetoric communication actually humanizes technology to a further extent. And that will be my focus for my reflective paper this week…..