Blog Entry 5

Autobiography/family identity:

School/Career/Discipline:

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Community/Social

Entertainment/culture:

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(Caption) There are many facets to my life. The following quote encompasses the feeling of working hard during the days and just wanting some comedic relief at the end of it all.

“I just feel like people like a little break. Especially at 12:37 at night, you go, like, ‘I’m just tired of the snarky right now. I just want to lie down and have somebody make me laugh for an hour”.

-Jimmy Fallon

Optional Reading Discussion

Ulmer’s insights and categorizations are interesting. Specifically, Ulmer writes, “The third axis, now promoted to equal status, is pleasure/pain (Spinoza’s joy/sorrow), whose relevance is not to truth or rightness but well-being. Well-being…mediates quarrels between what is true and what is right” (Ulmer, 2009). This perhaps can be interpreted to mean that the desire to live a good life is important to Electracy, and that that desire can motivate us to know what is right in a given situation. Another interesting point that was made was when Ulmer wrote, “Philosophers complain that the hegemony of the techno-scientific worldview in modernity resulted in the disenchantment of the world, an impoverishment of experience and a collapse into a one-dimensional utilitarian form of life” (Ulmer 2009). It may be argued that this is true in the apparatus of Literacy. There is one right answer in that paradigm, and so there are many duplicate reasonings and systems of investigation. However, I do agree with Ulmer when he posits that Electracy may be a means of integrating new strategies of meaning. It will be interesting to see if this truly is the case. There are certainly aspects of Electracy that allow for more freedom of expression and truer representations of self.

Blog Entry 4

“…we should use the term capta, which would empha­sise a con­struc­tivist approach: capta is taken from real­ity, while data is con­ceived as given, objective.” (Rettberg, 2014, p.69). Sometimes what quantitative characteristics are compiled about us are not as objective as we think. Some ways that I have been represented to databases are somewhat inaccurate and aren’t necessarily perfect representations of reality.  For example, Facebook lists that I have 4 family members. I have 5 siblings alone. Additionally, Facebook may have seen that, this week, my 1 post was to a student pre-health group. It does not necessarily know that I spent much more time just browsing my newsfeed for information about friends or to see what is happening in the world. I do not only participate in Facebook to correspond with a pre-health organization. However, these activities have influenced the advertisements I see and the pages I am suggested to like. Perhaps it is true that seeing these ads and suggested pages influence how I think. When I see those pages or suggestions, I often start to think about my real-world responsibilities and then tend to move away from Facebook to work on an assignment or go to a meeting. Rettberg explains this using a quote by Foucault: “‘Technologies of power…determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject” (Rettberg, 2014, p 84).  There are many facets of my life, and the sites and databases I frequently visit do not get a complete picture of who I am.

Machine Vision:

Extra Credit Exercise and reflection

The world can be understood through several forms of knowing. One topic can be represented in multiple forms. For example, my sister became a vegetarian a little over a year ago. She had a specific experience which prompted her to make this decision: she witnessed a truck carrying animals to be slaughtered. She felt many emotions upon seeing that image. Therefore, it is easy to understand the concept of vegetarianism through the single beliefs of one person. These beliefs are retold as personal anecdotes. This exemplifies the concept of Orality, the use of language to relay information (Ulmer, 2010). When such a story is told from the perspective of one person, pathos is often evoked and the audience is persuaded through emotional appeal. In this way, the audience is encouraged to agree with author, perhaps about their belief about how to treat animals.  These methods are very different than those which are employed to support arguments which fall under the Information Paradigm.

While the Information Paradigm is a very different mode of communication, it can still be applied to a topic which was previously explained through the Belief/Story Paradigm, such as vegetarianism. It is clear that the Information Paradigm employs logos more often than it does pathos. Thus, an argument for vegetarianism in the Information Paradigm would cite statistics or empirical research rather than personal experiences. For example “people who consume higher amounts of fruits and vegetables have about one-half the risk of cancer” (Craig, 2015). It is clear that logos can be a rhetorical device which also persuades the audience to agree with the author. It is evidence that there are many ways to understand vegetarianism. It is also clear that the Information Paradigm corresponds to the Literacy apparatus, in which arguments are institutionalized through schools and other academic organizations. By transitioning from a personal anecdote to statistics as means to prove an argument that vegetarianism is beneficial, the communication paradigm has been transformed.

Reflection:

It is enlightening to really see how one topic or argument can be understood and supported through multiple intellectual paradigms. This also reveals that there are multiple ways of knowing about a subject.  Additionally, it may be possible to support an argument through the application of one paradigm (one individual’s personal anecdote) but then disprove the argument through application of another paradigm (statistics conveying information contrary to the position in the anecdote).  Thus, it is possible to transform the mode of an argument from one paradigm to another. It is also possible to transform the nature of the argument, for to against, by applying two different intellectual paradigms. These insights reveal interesting characteristics of argument. Today’s society may be more inclined to accept arguments that are supported using logos, as in the Information Paradigm. A shift has occurred from Orality to Literacy. Depending on the nature of the argument, however, Orality may be very persuasive. Emotional appeal may be very effective when used to make an argument about vegetarianism or the customer service experience in a restaurant.

Works Cited:

Craig, Winston. (2015) . Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diets. Retrieved from

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/

Ulmer, Gregory. (John Craig Freeman). 2010, September 10. Ulmer Tapes (2.04). Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tupnx0h1fxc