Check out this Gawker article on its attempts to reveal the insipidity of the nifty algorithm Coca Cola developed as part of its #MakeItHappy Twitter campaign. Several aspects of the story interest me, which I plan to address in upcoming posts. For now, consider this irony: Coke’s algorithm got called out by Gawker’s algorithm.
I proposed to respond, and was invited this week to post a response, to the MediaCommons frontpage survey question and video interview with Max Marshall: How has reblogging and reblogging culture on sites like Tumblr and Twitter complicated the notion of authorship? Here’s the interview with Max Marshall that, along with the survey question, prompted my response….
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Composition and rhetoric is a little bit of an intimidating field to write one’s CV into, because we study and have expertise on the rhetoricity of things. Applying those same guidelines and standards to my own work can be intimidating. Nevertheless, here’s a beginning outline. Personal Information Include meaningful contact information: where I live is…
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As I sought CVs, I started seeking those for luminaries who I respect a great deal, like Paul Prior and Charles Bazerman. But I quickly discovered that luminaries like these teach at similar kinds of schools, and the requirement to include three Carnegie classifications among the four CVs required that I find more than luminaries….
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The fall 2010 census led to significant changes at my institution. We discovered that the 2010 realignment of Carnegie Classification categories affected the ability of our division, a professional and continuing education unit, to grow beyond boundaries strictly defined and regulated by the Carnegie Classification system. For an entrepreneurial continuing education unit, this realignment significantly affected…
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I have to admit that I’m taking this class, at least in part, because I was asked to take it! However, I’m becoming keenly aware on a daily basis that the life of a scholar and faculty member is more than just teaching and research. The focus on service, the expectations for committee membership and…
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I’m Daniel Hocutt. I’m a part-time distance student in the English PhD program at Old Dominion University, where I’m entering my second year of study. My focus areas in the program are technology and media studies and writing, rhetoric, and discourse studies. My research interests broadly include professional and technical writing — the use of…
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Slack, J. D., Miller, J. M., and Doak, J. (1993). The technical communicator as author: Meaning, power, authority. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 7(1), 12-36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1050651993007001002 While this article could feel dated (it was published over 20 years ago), its message is as relevant and meaningful today as it was when it was released. And I…
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Barton B. F., & Barton, M. S. (2004). Ideology and the map: Toward a postmodern visual design practice. In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 232-252). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Summary: Maps have ideology. This is hardly news at this point. However, the authors’ focus in different…
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Dobrin, D. N. (2004). What’s technical about technical writing. In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. A. Selber (eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 107-123). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Dobrin offers this brief definition of technical writing: “technical writing is writing that accommodates technology to the user” (p. 118). He offers this “new” definition in response to previous definitions…
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