You're Doing It Wrong - and It's Working!

Jockeys Before the Race by Edgar Degas
 Public domain image: Wikimedia Commons

I considered titling this entry, "A Pole through the Horse's Head."

Recently, WIRED Magazine ran an article about design that was autobiographical in nature, and theoretically provocative in implications. The article, "Why Getting It Wrong Is the Future of Design" began with a discussion of Degas' painting, Jockeys Before the Race - which you see to the right.

The most obvious element is pole, which is jarringly juxtaposed over the horse's face in a location that is neither centered, nor adhering to the rule-of-thirds.In Degas' day, social media was ablaze with cries of "You're Doing It Wrong!" (Keep in mind that social media, at that time, consisted of letters and reviews and conversations.) But after a while, it became as obvious as the pole in your face that this gesture opened up a new way of artistic seeing and showing.

The article's author, Scott Dadich, recounts a design decision he made regarding WIRED's cover - a decision that he knew to be "wrong" according to the established professional protocol, a decision he came to regret after the cover went to press, (read about the decision in the article, I'm not telling you everything,) but a decision that opened up a new way of seeing and executing design in the magazine. Of this event, Dadich says:

We have figured out the rules of creating sleek sophistication. We know, more or less, how to get it right. Now, we need a shift in perspective that allows us to move forward. We need a pole right through a horse's head.

Maybe those of us who work in new media, digital literacies and related fields could learn something from this example about how we can do more than simply theorize about randomization, aleatory methods, and non sens as necessary post-modern catalysts for invention. And, as I ponder these issues, I might offer two words for those composing in these new media:

1. Caution: It's not a wise thing to break the rules until you know you can execute your work according to the rules. The old adage, "Rules were made to be broken," doesn't seem so attractive when you meet someone on the interstate who has fully embraced that motto.
2. Throw Caution to the Wind: When you have mastered the rules, break them. Turn off the guidelines, Edit the "Master Slide," violate the template, spin the convention around, and experiment. New media doesn't yet know what they want to do/be/do, so give knock down some fences and give them some room to run.

A Few of My Favorite (Digital) Things

As a little Christmas present - I offer a few of my favorite digital things for 2013. I chose these things because they represent an interesting approach to digital literacies and composing for the brave new digital world in which we live. Or maybe just because I thought they were cool. Anyway - enjoy!

• The best new interactive web thingy is Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" multi-channel music video. Oh, yeah they did that - and it's pretty cool. It's the coolest provocation to digital creativity since Arcade Fire's interactive "Wilderness Downtown," (which I still use in my intro to Digital Literacies class.)
• My favorite (though sometimes frustrating) socially-connected app is WAZE. You probably heard about it this year when Google bought the app from its developer for about a billion dollars. It's like Google Maps meets Twitter - a free navigation app that allows users (er, uh, their passengers,) to share info with other travelers such as traffic jams, accidents, weather, and, ahem - location of police. (Admittedly, I started using this last year I think.)
• For me, and I suspect millions of others, TripAdvisor has stolen time and attention from my other travel and dining apps like Yelp and UrbanSpoon. It's desktop website and smartphone apps work well together to provide friendly, useful and comprehensive collection of user-reviews on dining spots, hotels, attractions, etc.
• Did you know you can use video backgrounds for PowerPoint? I just started using this really cool feature this year. Formerly, you'd have to shell out big bucks to get this effect - or use hinky 3rd-party apps that never failed to, uh... fail.
• And, though it is hardware, I just gotta say - I love the Jambox by Jawbone. I use it around the house for the worlds most portable best music, but its easy-synching with my smartphone and laptop means I can have awesome sound for any presentation, regardless of the available equipment at the venue.

What will 2014 bring? I don't know - but I figure that, whatever it is, it will be delivered by my Amazon Prime drone.

Scam-Mail, Bad Grammar and Audience

Every now and then I check my spam filter and find the usual junk mail: ads for foreign pharmaceuticals, phishing scams, solicitations to buy products to make my hair (or other things) grow, and the many variations on the Nigerian inheritance scam.

Here is an example of one such email:

Good day my dear,
In confidence,i have to introduce myself, i am Miss. Christy Watars,24 years old,I am the only child of late Mr & Mrs.Richard Watars.

I prayed before contacting you, please for God sake do not see my mail as embrassment as we do not know each other before.  I wish to request for your assistance in my efforts to procure the transfer of my inherited fund from my late parents for investment ventures under your care and directive,while i continue my education in NewZealand.

I inherited Three Million,Four Hundred Thousand US-Dollars ($3,400,000.00)I wish to require your assistance in receiving the transfer of my inherited fund in your account for investment purposes only, it is my wish to come over to Newzealand to further my education while you take care of the investment on my behalf.

i need your urgent assistance to transfer my inherited fund to Newzealand and also your assistance to secure my future in NZ where I will continue my education

Please I am waiting to hear from you soonest,God Bless You.
Yours sincerely,
Christy Watars

If you are a teacher of English, you feel almost compelled to correct the grammar, punctuation, syntax and formating and return it to the user, don't you? C'mon - don't you? Yeah - me too. And even though we don't proofread and edit the document, we all must wonder, "Why do scammers send out email with such horrendous writing? Don't they know that no one is going to buy the message with such glaring mistakes?"

Well, there is a method to the madness, and a mistaken assumption on our part. ALMOST no one will buy the error-riddled pitch. But the ones who do not recognize the mutilation of the Queen's English are exactly the ones who the scammers want to reach.  If you can correct the grammar and spelling, you are probably too smart for the scammers. They aren't trying to reach you. You are not their audience. People with lower intelligence are their audience.

So - if you want ONLY people with lower intelligence to give your message a fair hearing, then, for goodness sake, do not pay attention to spelling or grammar or punctuation!

Most of our students - and we ourselves - do not hope for such a limited audience. Whether it is teachers teaching, preachers preaching, advertisers advertising, or students studying, we hope to reach more than just the dumbest people around. In those cases, good grammar and correct spelling and proper punctuation insure you include the widest possible audience - including potential employers, potential publishers, colleagues, and leaders of the community. Everyone is included when good writing takes place. (I've never heard anyone say, "I ain't going back to that restaurant - they spell everything 'right' on their menu. Smarty-pants know-it-alls!" or "I don't think we should consider this candidate; his writing is just too perfect.")

Slippery Slope and Cable TV

In my Critical Thinking class, we deal with "Fallacies that Masquerade as Logic." If you teach Rhetoric or Forensics or Writing or Speech, you may deal with the same issues - like, for instance, the "Slippery Slope" argument. You know - if you give them an inch, they will take a mile, etc. I found some of the most entertaining examples for this logical fallacy in the Direct TV commercials below...

Don't Have a Grandson with a Dog Collar:

Don't Wake Up in a Roadside Ditch

 

While these examples "make visible" the rhetoric of such arguments, it might be prudent to note that some slopes actually ARE slippery, too.

Ethos for The Uber Wealthy

I recently attended a large conference where a number of very famous speakers were on the agenda. The conference was designed as a motivational event for area business people, community leaders, etc. Each of the speakers was known for some attribute or accomplishment. That is to say, each had a unique appeal of "ethos" to the audience.

(Annie Olson, in her webpage at LeTourneau University, describes Ethos as being "all about your credibility, reliability, and authority as a speaker or writer. Essentially, ethos is your reputation with your audience and the strategies you use to convince your audience that you should be believed or taken seriously.")

One of the speakers was Steve Forbes. I anticipated that his ethos might be questioned by some who saw him as just the son of a very rich father who left him a thriving financial empire. This concern had not escaped Mr. Forbes. He opened his talk with something like the following:
The best piece of advice I can give you regarding success is this: Choose rich and successful parents!

Forbes practiced wise rhetorics here - by acknowledging the perceived objection, and by dealing with it up front so he could move on with his speech.

The Rhetorical consideration of Setting (According to John Stewart)

If indeed, rhetoric is anything like "finding the available means of persuasion in a given situation," (and let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it is something like that,) then some things are both obvious and important:

• know who you are talking to (audience)
• know the situation and setting of your communication (kairos)
• know the network of cultural & communicative exchange of your audience (language)

It is sometimes easier to see how important these considerations are when they are done wrong, than it is to see when they are done right. For example, suppose you were to speak to a group of 11-year-old school kids - would you communicate the same as if you were speaking to a group of university faculty? No? I didn't think so.

You'd think this would be obvious. You'd be wrong.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Obama Speaks to a Sixth-Grade Classroom
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Vancouverage 2010

You know how much 6th graders love to meet bureaucratic heads of various government departments....

A couple of "rules of thumb" for rhetorically sound communication:
1) Don't bring a knife to a gun fight.
2)Don't bring teleprompters to a middle school classroom.

America is... a Nation of Cowards?

Sound bite of the day...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Persuasion depends on handling well matters of Ethos, Kairos, Pathos, and Audience?

Some say you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar...
Jethro said that you catch even more with a dead 'possum.

The Time for Talking...

In our Accelerated Composition class, we are learning to "read rhetorically," or to perform rhetorical analyses on "texts" of all type - written, film, video, visual, aural/oral, etc. Keeping in mind Aristotle's idea that "Rhetoric is the art of discovering the available means of persuasion in a given situation," we look at communication artifacts in terms of their logos (logical argument), pathos (emotional argument), ethos (ethical/relational argument), and their kairos.

Kairos, the Greek word often translated as "time," represents the time, occasion, context - that is to say - the rhetorical situation of a speech, text or other composition. Is it possible to use our rhetorical evaluation to predict, as well as to analyze, texts? I think it's worth a shot...

Much has been made (and will be made) about the upcoming Inaugural address of President-elect Barak Obama. The New York Times has an interesting video about the occasion. Pearson's DK Handbook (p. 114) has some interesting analytical questions that may be applied to the upcoming speech. For example:

• Who is included in the target audience? Who is excluded? Why?
• Toward what will the speaker draw the audience's attention? What might be overlooked as a result of this "directing?"
• What will be the guiding purpose of the speech? How explicitly will it be stated?
• What events at the time of the speech's production are likely to shape the audience's expectations? How will these events shape the writing of the speech?
• Where will this speech be delivered? (Specifically, how will the physical staging be set?)

Can you presciently answer these questions about Obama's inaugural speech? I bet you can. Weigh in with your prognostications, and then check back to follow-up after the speech is delivered.

Clear Cups: Making the Rhetoric Visible

In Science in Action, Latour makes the rhetoric of science visible, like Penn & Teller make the rhetoric of magic visible. The formation of "facts" in Latour's revealing treatment does not make science any less interesting, to the contrary, it encourages a fascination with the process of knowledge-making. (Just as "magic" becomes no less fascinating when Penn & Teller do the cups and balls trick with clear cups.)

If one views these resulting scientific "facts" as sausage, and science as sausage-making, Latour's work might be considered "bad," and Latour considered the Upton Sinclair of the Rhetorics of Science.

If one views the work of Latour as revelatory/apocalyptic, and sees the resulting understanding of "scientific knowledge" as new knowledge itself, then surely, Latour is the Penn & Teller of the Rhetorics of Science.


Penn & Teller's Cup And Balls Routine - A funny movie is a click away

Hold On There, Missy!

Oh, the enlightened age in which we live - where women can run for president, or vice-president, and be treated exactly the same as their male counter-parts.
Sorta.
Well, sometimes.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.

"There's also this issue that on April 18th, she [Palin] gave birth to a baby with Down's Syndrome....Children with Down's syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of Vice President, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?" –CNN's John Roberts on the August 29th, "Newsroom"

"Adding to the brutality of a national campaign, the Palin family also has an infant with special needs. What leads you, the Senator, and the Governor to believe that one won't affect the other in the next couple of months?...She has an infant -- she has an infant with special needs. Will that affect her campaigning?" -ABC's Bill Weir on "Good Morning America," August 30.

"Is she prepared for the all-consuming nature of the job?...Her first priority has to be her children. When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make?" - Washington Post's Sally Quinn, in an August 29, online column.

I can't remember when a male politician was scrutinized for his ability to handle parental duties. Old habits are hard to break, I guess. The ruts of theatrical marginalization (in this case, women portrayed as belonging in the kitchen, baking cookies, changing diapers, etc.) run deep. Too deep for some wagons to escape them in favor of a new path. At least Obama and Cosby are talking about the duties of fathers in our communities.

(Theatrical Marginalization IS "the past coming at you from the future." Just watch for the comparisons between Biden and Palin as regards their hair, makeup, hugs, spouses, etc. And, did you notice that no one ever mentioned that Obama, McCain, and all other male politcians wear "Pant Suits?")