Response to "The Rhetorical Situation"

Phew! This was a long read, and I did have to read it out loud to myself. (If a piece is particularly wordy, I force myself to read it out lout that way I can't skim over it as a result of boredom.) While I did have to force myself to pay attention and interpret the information every so often, I do think I understand the piece. (I mean, we'll see tomorrow for sure, but let me see what I can do right now.)

A rhetorical situation is a man-made situation that requires man-made change (or if not change, at least requires to be addressed) through the use of rhetorical discourse (or speech.) An extingence is the topic of conversation. The obstacle or even that needs to be address or changed. (An exstingence must be realistic - as opposed to fictitious, - and an exstingence maybe be short- or long-lived. An exsitngence may change and evolve over time, may die out entirely, or may live on forever.)  The audience of a rhetorical discourse must be a mediator of change, or the people being spoken to must be capable of being influenced. Someone who opposes the viewpoint of the exstingence would not be a rhetorical audience. Typically, it is a constraint of the exstingence that holds an audience back from becoming a rhetorical audience. A constraint is something that holds the audience in opposition (a religion, personal belief or attitude, background, facts, tradition, interests and motives, and so on...) A constraint is also something that can influence how the rhetor gives his discourse. For example, a religious background can influence how a speech is written and presented by the rhetor, and a religious background can also influence how that same speech is interpreted.

A fast example that just popped into my head: an episode of the TV show, Intervention.

Exstingence: A family member has a drug addiction problem and that needs to be addressed and/or changed.
-- This is a rhetorical exstingence because it is a man-made situation not naturally occurring (like a natural disaster) and because it requires man-made change (as opposed to natural fixation.) The exstingence of a drug problem may evolve to address ever-changing severity, or the changing drug of choice. While the exstingence may evolve, the need for a resolution remains the same.

Audience: The rhetorical audience in this situation would be the family staging the intervention, and in only certain instances include the person with the substance abuse issue.
-- This is a rhetorical audience because the family staging the intervention would be mediators of change. The family members are trying to initiate the change.
-- In some instances, if the abuser approaches their abuse with ignorance or denial, they would not be capable of being influenced into change. In other instances, the abuser might be open to change, and in that case would be a rhetorical audience member.

Constraints: Would include anything influencing any audience members to feel the way they do.
-- These might include religious beliefs, personal attitudes and backgrounds, facts or motives.
-- These can relate to both why the audience members might want to initiate change (how the rhetor uses constraints to influence the discourse) and to why the opposition is not open to change.

A rhetorical discourse is more than just persuasion, because in fact, everything is persuasive, as Bitzer argued.

Lack of Phone Access in the UP

Lack of Phone Access in the UP

The UP, and Houghton in particular, is a diverse area. For being in “the middle of nowhere,” as far as location is concerned, the area has plenty of “outsiders” and has a constant flow of traveler traffic. From students who move here to go to school (like me,) to people visiting us students, to vacationers here for the scenery, the population is consistently made of various groups of people originating from various places. According to Detroit Free Press, approximately 20% of Michigan Tech attendees originate from out of state, and consequently, many of us students have cell phone plans from companies that don’t service the UP.  While this also has to do with a tower/signal issue, I’m mostly concerned with the lack of phone stores in the area for us students with non-Michigan serving phones, and the problems that result from that. The lack of cellphone stores in the UP leads to a lack of access of technical help and resources.

The definition of access is quite simply just having connection. (Blackmon) While phones from US Cellular and Cellcom, (the two most popular Wisconsin-based cell phone companies) do transmit signal to the UP (barely,) the lack of stores in Upper Michigan and resources to go to for technical help limits our phone access dramatically.  For example, around the second week of school this year, the USB port in my HTC Merge smartphone broke. With my USB port cracked and not recognizing anything plugged into it, I wasn’t able to charge my phone; the only solution to have my phone repaired was to have it analyzed, and then either sent in for repairs or to be replaced. “No big deal,” I figured, I’ll just bring it into the nearest US Cellular store. It turns out, according to US Cellular’s Location Finder, the nearest store is 210 miles away, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. That clearly wasn’t a trip I could just make one night after class. I also researched to see if I could find an external battery charger for my phone, to bypass the USB port; but the HTC Merge is a phone made specifically for US Cellular, so parts for that phone are only sold in stores. So, for the next three weeks, until I was able to travel home for the weekend, I had to live almost cellphone-less. I say almost because I could ration out my battery power over the course of the weeks, but anyone who has a smartphone knows that a battery doesn’t last more than a few hours, so essentially; I was left without access. And if the same would have happened to someone with a Cellcom plan, they would have been slightly better off, only having to drive a quick jaunt of 93 miles to reach their store location, (one way of course.) (Cellcom)

When I interviewed a friend at Tech who has a plan with Cellcom, he said, “It becomes very inconvenient when I have questions about my phone. Trying to troubleshoot a problem with someone over the phone is so much more difficult than if I was able to walk into a store, where the associate could see and work with my phone in person, rather than trying to give me step-by-step instructions over the phone so I can try to fix my phone myself.” Technical problems happen all the time, especially on pieces of metal that are designed to be short-lived. It’s as if phones these days are designed to fall apart after a certain amount of time. So it becomes very problematic when people with technical problems or questions have nowhere to go for help.

If there is a “plus side” to be considered, the majority of people who move up here for long periods of time with an out-of-state provider are tech-savvy young adults. So at least we can be considered “Digital Natives” and can do a great deal of problem-shooting ourselves with minor issues on our phones, since we are characteristically fluent in the ways that our phones are set up. (Palfrey Gasser) However, if for some reason afamily with older “Digital Settlers” or “Digital Immigrants,” who didn’t have quite the versed know-how in how to deal with ever-changing forms of technology, had moved up to the UP and didn’t switch providers to someone who has a location in the area, they would have no place to go to ask an assistant for help when they needed it.

But, no matter how tech-savvy a person is, if a phone is broken, a trip to the store is pretty much the only solution. Calling an IT help number and having the phone shipped to them to inspect is an option, but it is a long, expensive, and equally limiting option.

Also, when the nearest phone store to Houghton is around a hundred miles away, the phone company assumes that the users don’t leave the radius made by the stores. I do receive nationwide signal, but as soon as I leave the Green Bay area, I’m instantly roaming. Roaming can drain a battery from looking for a nearer tower and can slow loading and downloading times. And, if my family didn’t have a nationwide plan, having a roaming phone could rack up fees for my phone very fast. For some people who rely heavily on their phones for minutely updates or impromptu business information, having a roaming phone could be a deterrent from traveling away from home.

Living almost 300 miles away from home and on my own, having a cellphone is essential. I use my phone for calling my parents back at home. I use my phone for checking my emails and newsfeeds between classes. I use my phone for looking up information during class. I use my phone as a security system through the school. Without a working phone, all these daily tasks were revoked from me, and with a phone that only works when the roaming signal lets it, these access-privileges are only conditional. When my access is limited or removed completely, I’m not able to function to my full capacity.

Clearly, there is an easy solution to this problem of lack-of-access. The expansion of a company to offer services closer to the UP area would be expensive, but might be worth their while considering how many Wisconsin students attend school up here and how many visitors the area draws. Access to a fast, reliable, working phone, and access to help when that phone breaks should not be a privilege, it should be a right.

Works Cited

Blackmon, Samantha. "(Cyber)Conspiracy Theories? African-American Students In The Computerized Writing Environment." Labor, writing technologies, and the shaping of composition in the academy. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 2007.

"Find A Location." Cellcom - Clearly the Best. New Cell, Inc. , 2012. Web. 13 Oct 2012. <http://www.cellcom.com/location.html>.

Jesse, David. "Michigan Colleges Go Out of State For Students." Detroit Free Press. (2012).

Levande, Justin. Personal Interview. 12 10 2012.

Palfrey, John, and Urs Gasser. Born Digital. New York: Basic Books, 2008. 1-15.

 "Store Locator." US Cellular: Hello Better. US Cellular, 2012. Web. 13 Oct 2012. <http://www.uscellular.com/storefinder/index.html>.

Response to "Literacy and Computer Literacy..."

I feel like this article didn't say anything new. I'm not saying it's bad, just that I feel like I've heard everything in it before.  I've heard all of the thesises before, either in Digital Media or in Communication and Culture and the info behind the thesises are all common-sense (meaning I didn't read anything completely unique or find anything that struck me as "new" info). This article just seems like a fine collection and summation of all the definitions of literacy that I've already seen. While I'm anxious for class tomorrow to discuss this piece (because I'm not sure exactly what we'll talk about, maybe I'll find a new insight on it,) I'm glad I have this summation of definitions. It sure is going to come in handy for quotes when I have to write my paper this week!

Response to "(Cyber) Conspiracy Theories"

Okay, I'm only half way through the second page and I need to stop for a second. In order to become a cyber human, you need to become  raceless, genderless, and free of ethnicity and any socioeconomic status? First off, not only is that completely impossible (unless you are in some weird asexual, a-ethnic cult) but it's also just completely irrational. I understand the concept of removing prior experience, and placing people as equals, but that doesn't mean we need to be the same. Aren't there always several pathways that lead  to the same point? So theoretically, a low-income black person could have been raised and given the same education and hired into the same job position as a high-class white person.

To become part of the digital society, it is completely absurd that all differing factors need to be removed. If we removed what makes individuals, well, individual... then what's the point of any civilization at all. There's no discussion or development to be had or made if there's no room for differing opinions. While the information we use digitally can be cloned, this in no way means the users of the media need to be cloned as well.

(Also, what makes digital society different than real society? Why do cyber-humans have to be clones in the digital sphere but diversity is okay in real life?)

Okay, rant done. Now time to read the rest of the article and hopefully let the article sort itself out. Be back later with more insights.

----------------

Now that I've read the article and understand why the gap in digital literacy and comfort-ability is where it's at for whites and minorities, I'm confused as to why there's not a whole lot of progress to try and mend the gap. The minorities are expected to be able to pick up and function at a level comparable to someone who's been raised with technology and uses it as if its second nature, when clearly, for the minorities, its a foreign concept. There sees to be very little work done to bring minorities up to speed, however. Maybe it's for fear of coming off racist or judgmental, but the gap seems to be ignored. I'm reminded of the Apple commercials for the iPad

This digital media artifact is meant to be used as for learning and business work, but the commercial only shows white hands. They don't even pretend to be demographically aimed at a variety of races. The gap will never be mended if no one's willing to mend it. It makes my pessimistic brain wonder if at the heart of corporations, the gap is ever meant to be mended...

New Form of Warfare

So the article as a whole isn't what I'm concerned about, because I'm not into politics too much, but just read the first few lines. 

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian authorities on Thursday sent text messages over cell phones nationwide with a message for rebels fighting President Bashar Assad's regime: "Game over."

The messages signed by the Syrian Arab Army also urged the rebels to surrender their weapons and warned the countdown to evict foreign fighters has begun. The texts appear to be part of the regime's psychological battle against the rebels, but are highly unlikely to have any effect on fighters intent on toppling Assad.

Syrians say they began receiving the messages a day after rebels bombed a military command center in Damascus — a major security breach of the heavily guarded capital that highlighted the regime's growing vulnerability in the face of a rebellion growing in confidence and capabilities.

People with cellular subscriptions received the messages while those with prepaid phones did not, residents in the Syrian capital said. (The whole article can be found here.)

The fact that we are using cell phones as a form of  psychological, guerrilla warfare is so fascinating. Pretty soon, war will no longer entail guns and bombs, it will just be passive-aggressive text messages from one side to another. 

Response to "Born Digital"

The description between the generation gap of the digital natives, digital immigrants and digital settlers couldn't have been more true. I spent the whole time reading this article laughing my butt off. I would like to say that I have a fairly decent understanding of how digital media works. My mom on the other hand though couldn't be further opposite. When she got her first smart phone, she affectionately called it her "genius phone" because of its capabilities. And one year, her New Year's Resolution was to create a Facebook page. In May she finally figured out how to get onto the website that is so difficultly named "www.facebook.com" For the new six months, I had to teach and reteach her her password, where the status bar was, and that someones wall was different from a personal message.

My grandpa, on the other hand, learned how to navigate Facebook too quickly. My grandpa has over 2,000 Facebook friends, only knowing about 5% of them personally. For example, I have a cousin (on my other side of the family, mind you) who lives in California. My cousin has a girlfriend who my family has never met, yet Grandpa added her on Facebook the day they became "Facebook Official." ... Yup, he's that guy. He has no sense of boundaries when it comes to Facebook either. Now that he's retired, he spends all day on Facebook, and takes up 98% of most people's newsfeeds by sharing literally every picture he sees,  commenting on them, and posting the exact same status every night (which reads "Great day with My facebook friends, good Night and God Bless.) And yes,  that horrible capitalization is a direct quote. When introducing myself to people around town, I have to constantly answer to the question, "Are you related to Ken LeGreve... you know, the Facebook one?" And my response is always, "I wish I could say no." A vast majority of the people my grandpa adds end up blocking him (and I will admit, I've even blocked my own bloodline as well) because when I tried to simply delete him, he re-added me within 10 minutes. I don't know how he noticed one friend out of 2,000 had disappeared so fast, but it's just too much.

It is so fair to say that different generations interact with digital medias differently. And while some people say that the internet needs to have a minimum age of use, it's probably equally fair to say that there should be a maximum age of use as well ;)

Digital Media Analysis: Is Online Sharing Legal?

     Pinterest is a form of digital media (which I will defend throughout the paper,) and is a new, emerging, and interactive social media outlet. The purpose of Pinterest is to give its users a format to find and share information. The intended use of Pinterest is for items, or “pins,” as they are called, to be shared or “repinned.” In fact, that’s how I came to know about the website. I was sharing interesting links on my Facebook profile when one of my friends introduced me to Pinterest, so I wouldn’t need Facebook as a middle-man to relay the information I found on another site. Pinterest functions by having users import information from an outside source (a newspaper/cooking recipe website/etc.) and then once it’s on Pinterest, the link spreads virally throughout the website internally, but I’ll explain that more in detail later. The main flaw with Pinterest is that while it is a sharing website, it is currently illegal to share information without consent from the owner of the link, which then in part makes the whole website illegal. Pinterest shows how current copyright laws are outdated with new forms of social interaction.

This is what Pinterest looks like:

Pinterest is a lot like a virtual magazine and a lot like an online tack board. Imagine flipping through a magazine, seeing an article that is interesting to you, cutting it out, and “pinning” it to your tack board to someday return to, to find again. Pinterest is a website that hosts a variety of interesting objects, be it pictures, recipes, blog articles, clothes sold on online companies or anything else imaginable. When the user finds something that they find interesting, they click on the item and then the “repin” button and that “pins” that item onto a virtual “board.” A board can be categorized as vaguely or as descriptive as the pinner chooses, much like a magazine cutter could leave her articles scattered on her bedroom floor, or could be categorized into a filing system.

Manovich’s definition of modularity is that it is “The fractal structure of new media… elements are assembled into larger-scale objects but continue to maintain their separate identities,” (Manovich 30). That relates to Pinterest because a user can have a screen of multiple boards, and each board consists of numerous individual pins- a much like several tiny squares fitting into one bigger box, and several boxes fitting into a larger box.

Now, to find items to pin, the user can scroll through a newsfeed of posts that have recently been “repinned” by people who the user chooses to follow - much like the newsfeed of information in Facebook. Or, if the user is looking for something specific, she can click on an organizational button to limit her search. For example, let’s say a Pinner is looking for wedding inspiration, (which is a commonly pinned genre.) She would click on the “Weddings and Events” button and that would bring her to a newsfeed containing every pin within the website that has been pinned to a board that has been labeled as a wedding board.

Pinterest can digitally “read” what genre a board falls under (because of the numeric coding associated with how a Pinner “tags” a post,) and then sorts all boards of the same kind together.  The automation of this process also defines Pinterest as a digital media artifact because the numeric coding of tags and the modular sorting of boards lead to a computerized, completely automatic sorting process (Manovich 32).

So, the items we pin can be from someone we know personally, if found in our newsfeed, or we could repin an item that originated from a complete stranger on the other side of the world. There are numerous ways to find the same link, too. Because once a link has been repinned, it is now on both the user’s board, and also the board from which the user found the link. In essence, the link multiplies with every share. And with every share, the user has the ability to change the caption of the link. So, the link now exists on the website under a different tag as well. Consequently, now a link could be found on several hundred thousand people’s newsfeeds, and potentially under a different tag. Because of this, there becomes an infinite amount of ways to find a pin. Now, Manovich’s idea of digital media variability is expressed, because he says, “A new media object is not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite ways” (Manovich 36). A pin multiplies every time it is repinned, it does not just exist on Pinterest once, but now each link exists several hundred thousand times, in several hundred thousand individual locations, in potentially several hundred thousand formats. 

Pinning a pin would be pointless if the links were merely pictures and lead to nowhere. Pinterest is not an online cloud of saved .jpg’s.  The point of Pinterest is to link us to other sites. A picture of a piece of pie, when clicked, links you to the website that hosts the recipe for that pie. A picture of a headline of a blog will bring you to the actual blog where the article was posted, for the user to read. A picture might link to a tumblr or flickr site. Or a clothing store could post a picture of a shirt, so when clicked on, the user would be directed back to the store’s website where they could find the shirt to buy. Anything from anywhere on the web can be added to Pinterest, categorized for someone to find and be interested in, and be then linked back to the original host site. It’s almost like a Google search, except you don’t have to know what you’re looking for.  

In fact, it’s almost like the memex that Bush mentions in his article, “As We MayThink.” It’s a way to store tons of digital information in one place, categorized and sorted together, to be referenced when needed.

It’s as though Pinterest is a hyerreality (Baudrillard) of the internet, within the internet. The whole internet (theoretically) is stored within Pinterest, (or at least could be,) and the posts that people pin give an indication of how people want to live their lives. Pinterest has a demographic of upper-middle class white females between the ages of 15-35. So, according to Pinterest, important things in life are hair, makeup and clothing styles, foods to try, popular wedding and home décor trends, and pop culture. Commonly pinned things become viral, and unpopular topics fade off into the hidden corners of the internet, to be rarely seen or pinned again.

Now that we know how Pinterest functions, we can talk about the flaws of its system. The biggest issue with Pinterest has to do with copyrights.

Having the interconnectivity with every person who shares the same interest as us, and every website on the internet, is both a blessing and a curse. While the point of Pinterest is to share information, and people post things onto Pinterest so it can be shared, copyright laws say that Pinterest users technically aren’t allowed to share anything that they don’t have specifically granted permission for. … So, unless you are able to track the link’s origin (which you may or may not be able to do because of the tagging system,) and unless you are granted specific permission from the creator, pinning a post on Pinterest is illegal.

Sometime last year, a stipulation in Pinterest’s legal section said, ““You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for all Member Content that you make available through the Site, Application and Services. Accordingly, you represent and warrant that: (i) you either are the sole and exclusive owner of all Member Content that you make available through the Site, Application and Services or you have all rights, licenses, consents and releases that are necessary to grant to Cold Brew Labs the rights in such Member Content, as contemplated under these Terms; and (ii) neither the Member Content nor your posting, uploading, publication, submission or transmittal of the Member Content or Cold Brew Labs’ use of the Member Content (or any portion thereof) on, through or by means of the Site, Application and the Services will infringe, misappropriate or violate a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other proprietary or intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy, or result in the violation of any applicable law or regulation.” 

A Pinterest-loving lawyer was one of the first people to find this clause within the website and after that, the questionable legality of Pinterest went viral.

The point of Pinterest is to find and share information, and for that information to then be found again. Information is meant to go viral. Companies and blog writers want their work to be shared as a way of free promotion. But giving each person (potentially millions) granted permission to share the site

According to The Daily Dot, Pinterest workers have since told the Wall Street Journal that this is just merely a case of the law being behind technology, since all major websites need to have a section on copyrights, just to cover their asses in the case that someone tries to pull someone else’s website off as their own. Sharing, spreading, and repining a link to the website, with credit to the rightful owner, is in fact perfectly fine, even if the owner doesn’t express permission for the link to be shared.

There are millions of sharing sites on the internet besides Pinterest. Sites like 9GAG or The Berry or StumbleUpon are sharing sites. Anything with a URL can be linked and shared onto virtually any website. The new wave of social interaction is no longer “Hey, come to my house and look at this link I found!” but rather now, “Hey, look at this link I sent you!”

It all boils down to a question: should media on the internet allowed to be shared and linked? After all, it wouldn’t be published on the internet if the maker didn’t want people to find it, right? And how could a company ever turn down free promotion to its website? Most importantly, if a person isn’t illegally, calling someone else’s work his own, what is the issue with giving the website’s link to someone else?

The ideas of copyrights, sharing and ownership within digital media are all very interesting (albeit confusing,) and Pinterest is a fine example of this. Pinterest, a new and digital media, speaks of the new and ever-changing world we live in. And I bet, copyright laws soon will be changing to match the viral, share-able virtual world we live in.

Works Cited

Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think." Atlantic Magazine . 07 1945: Web. 26 Sep. 2012. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/>.

Baudrillard, Jean. “Simularca and Simulations.” Selected Writings. Stanford University Press, (1998):  166-184.

Kowalski, Kristen. "Why I Tearfully Deleted My Pinterest Inspiration Boards." DDK Portaits. ddkportaits.com, 24 02 2012. Web. Web. 25 Sep. 2012. <http://ddkportraits.com/2012/02/why-i-tearfully-deleted-my-pinterest-inspiration-boards/>.

Manovich, Lev. "What is New Media?." Language of New Media. (2002): 19-63.

Orsini, Lauren Rae. "Pinterest Addresses Copyright Concerns." Daily Dot. (2012): n. page. Web. 25 Sep. 2012. <http://www.dailydot.com/business/pinterest-copyright-infringementlegality-statement/>.

"Pinterest/Copyright and Trademark." Pinterest. Pinterest, 06 04 12. Web. 25 Sep 2012. <http://pinterest.com/about/copyright/>.