In Which I Learn Many New Words

If Coding is for Geeks I can Only Assume This is Worse (Kidding)

Have you ever wanted to code computers without coding computers? Have you ever fought with Microsoft Word so hard that you wanted to throw your computer across the room or out a window? If you answered yes to one or more questions Markdown may be something to look into. Being somewhat simple, I was horribly confused when I read, “Markdown is a lightweight markup language that you can use to add formatting elements to plaintext text documents,” in the Markdown Guide. After class on Tuesday I finally understood that by using certain apps or websites, such as Dillinger, you can use a variety of symbols to represent font sizes, bullet points, or other components of document formatting. This “language” can then be translated into a consistently formatted document which eliminates some of the issues that people may run into using a traditional app like Word.

You Should Know that People Might Take Your Work

In “Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery”, Jim Ridolfo and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss explain considerations authors should have when composing in our current culture. Last year I worked for a school’s marketing department, and the things I had to consider there are quite similar to the ones this article mentions. One example is that my supervisor would always tell my to abbreviate website links as much as possible in case they would be read on a radio show. Things like this might not be a first consideration depending on the context of your writing but it’s something to think about. This would be important if you’re writing for a business. Companies often focus on short content that tells can convey a message quickly. Essentially if you want people to read or repost your work, you need to make it readable, repostable, or both.

Treating AI Like a Person

Well, not exactly, but kind of. In “Introduction to Machine Rhetorics”, Lance Cummings discusses the parallels between classical rhetorics and AI programming or prompting. Specifically, he says that in the way people respond to rhetoric, we can use similar principles to prompt AI. While traditional rhetoric takes into account a person’s ability to perceive logic, emotion, and ethical consideration and uses these to prompt listeners or perceivers to conclusion or action, AI needs a specific set of stimuli to generate the desired result. Much in the way that we observed human behavior and learning to discover or group the rhetorical appeals we know today, we can observe AI prompting through the lens of rhetoric to make prompting and training more efficient. I believe that this way of looking at AI makes a decent amount of sense, however, I do think that there are places where Cummings takes his analogy too far. There are places throughout the article where he stretches his language to make AI appear almost human. One example is when Cummings refers to AI as a “co-author” which to me is comparable to listing the sources you cite as a co-author instead of just calling them sources. I just found the metaphor a tad strange with the fluctuation between calling AI a tool, and acting as though it’s actually self aware. Overall I think I understand what Cummings was trying to get at, but still think it could have been done in a less convoluted way.