: As new and developing technologies impact public and private life, rhetoricians would be remiss to overlook the deliberative rhetorics that justify their development, implementation, use-value, and impact. Using the 2013 joint congressional heari ng “Next Generation Computing and Big Data Analytics” as an example, I argue that justificatory rhetorics about technology intersect with rhetoric from technology, obscuring information vital to critical deliberation. I demonstrate that the expert witnesses at this hearing draw upon rhetoric traditionally associated with American industrialization. Doing so allows them to articulate Big Data as a resource situated upon a metaphorical, American landscape and thus encourages the public to treat it as a natural resource that must be exploited for the betterment of the nation. Ultimately, I argue the use of this rhetoric dissuades critical analysis of the worth of Big Data and investigation of its technical aspects. This raises troubling questions about the ability of rhetoric about technology to both veil and guides what the public accepts as ethical rhetoric from technology. technical aspects of Big Data technology. The witnesses draw upon the American middle-landscape myth by using a mishmash of natural, utopian, ameliorative, and transformative narratives to deflect critical
{"title":"Big Data, Congress, and the Rhetoric of Technology: Or, How to Industrialize Cyberspace","authors":"C. Adamczyk","doi":"10.13008/2151-2957.1284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1284","url":null,"abstract":": As new and developing technologies impact public and private life, rhetoricians would be remiss to overlook the deliberative rhetorics that justify their development, implementation, use-value, and impact. Using the 2013 joint congressional heari ng “Next Generation Computing and Big Data Analytics” as an example, I argue that justificatory rhetorics about technology intersect with rhetoric from technology, obscuring information vital to critical deliberation. I demonstrate that the expert witnesses at this hearing draw upon rhetoric traditionally associated with American industrialization. Doing so allows them to articulate Big Data as a resource situated upon a metaphorical, American landscape and thus encourages the public to treat it as a natural resource that must be exploited for the betterment of the nation. Ultimately, I argue the use of this rhetoric dissuades critical analysis of the worth of Big Data and investigation of its technical aspects. This raises troubling questions about the ability of rhetoric about technology to both veil and guides what the public accepts as ethical rhetoric from technology. technical aspects of Big Data technology. The witnesses draw upon the American middle-landscape myth by using a mishmash of natural, utopian, ameliorative, and transformative narratives to deflect critical","PeriodicalId":93222,"journal":{"name":"Poroi","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44642199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For nearly a decade, big data has been hyped as an amazing new technology that will benefit corporations and consumers alike. By promising customized knowledge at an accelerated pace, big data technologies have slowly saturated the digital systems American consumers use to live, work, and play. Yet have the promised benefits materialized? An examination of the proposed contact tracing applications in response to the novel coronavirus alongside existing wearable technologies reveal that our trust and vulnerability, opening our bodies to be sensed by these networked systems, is a fraught rhetorical activity, but not because an omniscient system now sees us and cares for us in our time of grave need. Rather, the opaque system misunderstands our embodied rhetorical actions, is incapable of moving the American polis, and cannot generate the promised collective action.
{"title":"Rhetorical Implications of Contact Tracing Mobile Applications: An Examination of Big Data’s Work on the Body","authors":"Candice L. Lanius","doi":"10.13008/2151-2957.1313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1313","url":null,"abstract":"For nearly a decade, big data has been hyped as an amazing new technology that will benefit corporations and consumers alike. By promising customized knowledge at an accelerated pace, big data technologies have slowly saturated the digital systems American consumers use to live, work, and play. Yet have the promised benefits materialized? An examination of the proposed contact tracing applications in response to the novel coronavirus alongside existing wearable technologies reveal that our trust and vulnerability, opening our bodies to be sensed by these networked systems, is a fraught rhetorical activity, but not because an omniscient system now sees us and cares for us in our time of grave need. Rather, the opaque system misunderstands our embodied rhetorical actions, is incapable of moving the American polis, and cannot generate the promised collective action.","PeriodicalId":93222,"journal":{"name":"Poroi","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43407144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rhetorical studies of science, technology, and medicine (RSTM) have provided critical understanding of how argument and argument norms within a field shape what is meant by “data.” Work has also examined how questions that shape data collection are asked, how data is interpreted, and even how data is shared. Understood as a form of argument, data reveals important insights into rhetorical situations, the motives of rhetorical actors, and the broader appeals that shape everything from the kinds of technologies built, to their inclusion in our daily lives, to the infrastructures of cities, the medical practices and policies concerning public health, etc. Big data merits continued attention from RSTM scholars as our understanding of its pervasive use and its ethos grows, but its arguments remain elusive (Salvo, 2012). To unpack the elusivity of big data, we explore one particularly illustrative case of big data and political, democratic influence: the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. To understand the case, we turn to social studies of data to explore the range of ethical issues raised by big data, and to examine the rhetorical strategies that entail big data.
{"title":"The Rhetoric of Big Data: Collecting, Interpreting, and Representing in the Age of Datafication","authors":"B. Mehlenbacher, A. Mehlenbacher","doi":"10.13008/2151-2957.1311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1311","url":null,"abstract":"Rhetorical studies of science, technology, and medicine (RSTM) have provided critical understanding of how argument and argument norms within a field shape what is meant by “data.” Work has also examined how questions that shape data collection are asked, how data is interpreted, and even how data is shared. Understood as a form of argument, data reveals important insights into rhetorical situations, the motives of rhetorical actors, and the broader appeals that shape everything from the kinds of technologies built, to their inclusion in our daily lives, to the infrastructures of cities, the medical practices and policies concerning public health, etc. Big data merits continued attention from RSTM scholars as our understanding of its pervasive use and its ethos grows, but its arguments remain elusive (Salvo, 2012). To unpack the elusivity of big data, we explore one particularly illustrative case of big data and political, democratic influence: the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. To understand the case, we turn to social studies of data to explore the range of ethical issues raised by big data, and to examine the rhetorical strategies that entail big data.","PeriodicalId":93222,"journal":{"name":"Poroi","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47608094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
: This essay offers five conceptual entry points for engaging with Big Data from a rhetorical perspective. These five concepts — data in/as relationships, observability/action, patterns, diachronicity, and audience — serve as points of deep conceptual commonality between definitions of Big Data and principles in rhetorical studies and are offered here as considerations for critiquing uses of Big Data from a rhetorical-humanistic perspective, as well as for guiding rhetorical work that uses Big Data.
{"title":"Five considerations for engaging with Big Data from a rhetorical-humanistic perspective","authors":"Z. Majdik","doi":"10.13008/2151-2957.1312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1312","url":null,"abstract":": This essay offers five conceptual entry points for engaging with Big Data from a rhetorical perspective. These five concepts — data in/as relationships, observability/action, patterns, diachronicity, and audience — serve as points of deep conceptual commonality between definitions of Big Data and principles in rhetorical studies and are offered here as considerations for critiquing uses of Big Data from a rhetorical-humanistic perspective, as well as for guiding rhetorical work that uses Big Data.","PeriodicalId":93222,"journal":{"name":"Poroi","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41622579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tree-like visualizations have played a central role in taxonomic and evolutionary biology for centuries, and the idea of a “tree of life” has been a pervasive notion not only in biology but also in religion, philosophy, and literature for much longer. The tree of life is a central figure in Darwin’s Origin of Species in both verbal and visual forms. As one of the most powerful and pervasive images in biological thought, what conceptual and communicative work has it enabled? How have the visual qualities and elements of the tree form interacted with biological thinking over time? This paper examines the pre-Darwinian history of tree images, the significance of Darwin’s use of such images, and the development of tree diagrams after Darwin. This history shows evidence of four separate traditions of visualization: cosmological, logicalphilosophical, genealogical, and materialist. Visual traditions serve as rhetorical contexts that provide enthymematic backing, or what Perelman calls “objects of agreement,” for interpretation of tree diagrams. They produce polysemic warrants for arguments in different fields. The combination of the genealogical tradition with the cosmological and the logical changed the framework for thinking about the natural world and made Darwin’s theory of evolution possible; the later materialist tradition represents the “modernization” of biology as a science.
{"title":"\"Tree Thinking\": The Rhetoric of Tree Diagrams in Biological Thought","authors":"Carolyn R. Miller, Molly Hartzog","doi":"10.13008/2151-2957.1290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1290","url":null,"abstract":"Tree-like visualizations have played a central role in taxonomic and evolutionary biology for centuries, and the idea of a “tree of life” has been a pervasive notion not only in biology but also in religion, philosophy, and literature for much longer. The tree of life is a central figure in Darwin’s Origin of Species in both verbal and visual forms. As one of the most powerful and pervasive images in biological thought, what conceptual and communicative work has it enabled? How have the visual qualities and elements of the tree form interacted with biological thinking over time? This paper examines the pre-Darwinian history of tree images, the significance of Darwin’s use of such images, and the development of tree diagrams after Darwin. This history shows evidence of four separate traditions of visualization: cosmological, logicalphilosophical, genealogical, and materialist. Visual traditions serve as rhetorical contexts that provide enthymematic backing, or what Perelman calls “objects of agreement,” for interpretation of tree diagrams. They produce polysemic warrants for arguments in different fields. The combination of the genealogical tradition with the cosmological and the logical changed the framework for thinking about the natural world and made Darwin’s theory of evolution possible; the later materialist tradition represents the “modernization” of biology as a science.","PeriodicalId":93222,"journal":{"name":"Poroi","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44045367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Dogmatism: A Colloquy on Deirdre Nansen McCloskey’s “Free Speech, Rhetoric, and a Free Economy”","authors":"D. Mccloskey, W. Bates, Kent Rainey Biler, E. Bissell, Roger E. Bissell, T. Camplin, Philippe Chamy, R. Long, Jason Walker, C. Sciabarra","doi":"10.13008/2151-2957.1307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1307","url":null,"abstract":"Recommended Citation McCloskey, Deirdre N.; Bates, Winton; Biler, Kent Rainey; Bissell, Elizabeth; Bissell, Roger E.; Camplin, Troy; Chamy, Philippe; Long, Roderick Tracy; Walker, Jason; and Sciabarra, Chris Matthew. \"Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Dogmatism: A Colloquy on Deirdre Nansen McCloskey’s “Free Speech, Rhetoric, and a Free Economy”.\" Poroi 15, Iss. 2 (2020): Article 3. https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1307","PeriodicalId":93222,"journal":{"name":"Poroi","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44406050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines how sensation and affect make different kinds of resilience meaningful to communities. Through a case study, we analyze public deliberation about a proposal to expand interstates in Tampa, Florida. We describe how evidence introduced by opposing sides foregrounded conflicting sensory experiences. The resulting sensoriums upheld different aspects of the city’s identity as worth maintaining. Drawing from recent scholarship defining resilience as something that can always be done otherwise, we suggest that resilience is better understood as entangled with public affect. We argue that a key point for rhetorical intervention in city planning is considering which futures and visions of resilience are being imagined for publics.
{"title":"The Resilience of Sensation in Urban Planning","authors":"Meredith A. Johnson, Nathan R. Johnson","doi":"10.13008/2151-2957.1295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1295","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how sensation and affect make different kinds of resilience meaningful to communities. Through a case study, we analyze public deliberation about a proposal to expand interstates in Tampa, Florida. We describe how evidence introduced by opposing sides foregrounded conflicting sensory experiences. The resulting sensoriums upheld different aspects of the city’s identity as worth maintaining. Drawing from recent scholarship defining resilience as something that can always be done otherwise, we suggest that resilience is better understood as entangled with public affect. We argue that a key point for rhetorical intervention in city planning is considering which futures and visions of resilience are being imagined for publics.","PeriodicalId":93222,"journal":{"name":"Poroi","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48815894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
: This article interrogates the rhetoric of “self - reliance” as a common feature of discourses about individual and community resilience by examining Canadian food charters in the context of regional food systems aimed at improving community food security. Despite the association of food charters with alternative food systems and progressive politics, we find that their ambiguous and shifting appeals to self-reliance largely conflict with their stated social justice goals of community food security, particularly the goal of alleviating the distress of food in security for vulnerable community members. Overall, we argue that the rhetoric of self-reliance in Canadian food charters primarily perpetuates a neoliberal ideology of resilience that promotes an active, enterprising ethos of responsibility for one’s own well being, whether at the level of individuals, communities, or food systems. Our study thus contributes to critical scholarship that contextualizes and problematizes specific sites and practices of resilience discourse.
{"title":"Resilience and Self-Reliance in Canadian Food Charter Discourse","authors":"Philippa Spoel, Colleen Derkatch","doi":"10.13008/2151-2957.1298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1298","url":null,"abstract":": This article interrogates the rhetoric of “self - reliance” as a common feature of discourses about individual and community resilience by examining Canadian food charters in the context of regional food systems aimed at improving community food security. Despite the association of food charters with alternative food systems and progressive politics, we find that their ambiguous and shifting appeals to self-reliance largely conflict with their stated social justice goals of community food security, particularly the goal of alleviating the distress of food in security for vulnerable community members. Overall, we argue that the rhetoric of self-reliance in Canadian food charters primarily perpetuates a neoliberal ideology of resilience that promotes an active, enterprising ethos of responsibility for one’s own well being, whether at the level of individuals, communities, or food systems. Our study thus contributes to critical scholarship that contextualizes and problematizes specific sites and practices of resilience discourse.","PeriodicalId":93222,"journal":{"name":"Poroi","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47226006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
: Sickle cell discourses are not merely descriptions of medical matters but contentious sites that invoke rhetorical arguments to support racialized medical borders, human difference, and ontological essentialism. In this essay, I examine the way that those stricken by Sickle Cell Anemia appropriate the disease to advocate for their voice and visibility. I disclose how the construction of SCA as a black disease becomes a contested terrain which is often a “cultural centering on identity and dignity.” At odds is how the body is inscribed with a set of meanings in its association with blackness, the woeful ignorance that’s pervasive in the medical community of those who treat sickle cell patients and the indomitable will of the warrior to survive regardless. I c onsider the “warring ideals in one dark body,” urgings to be seen and heard. These manifest as performances of resistance, acts of resilience, and ways of asserting agency to maintain a semblance of humanity in the midst of situations that are anything but.
{"title":"We are No Longer Invisible","authors":"Raquel M. Robvais","doi":"10.13008/2151-2957.1296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1296","url":null,"abstract":": Sickle cell discourses are not merely descriptions of medical matters but contentious sites that invoke rhetorical arguments to support racialized medical borders, human difference, and ontological essentialism. In this essay, I examine the way that those stricken by Sickle Cell Anemia appropriate the disease to advocate for their voice and visibility. I disclose how the construction of SCA as a black disease becomes a contested terrain which is often a “cultural centering on identity and dignity.” At odds is how the body is inscribed with a set of meanings in its association with blackness, the woeful ignorance that’s pervasive in the medical community of those who treat sickle cell patients and the indomitable will of the warrior to survive regardless. I c onsider the “warring ideals in one dark body,” urgings to be seen and heard. These manifest as performances of resistance, acts of resilience, and ways of asserting agency to maintain a semblance of humanity in the midst of situations that are anything but.","PeriodicalId":93222,"journal":{"name":"Poroi","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42094365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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