What the hell is “Rhetorical Velocity” even about?
How do we see the “Amplification Effect” today? Especially with influencers/web celebrities?
Intro to Machine Rhetoric poses AI rhetoric as a techne, or an art/craft. Is this reasonable or is AI rhetoric a tool?
I really enjoyed the remix section from Ridolfo and DeVoss. Very cool. Remixing is swag and the best method to add to a saturated culture.
No, seriously, what is Rhetorical Velocity? Am I an idiot? The answer is yes.
Overall, the Intro to Machine Rhetoric piece was really interesting. I like the idea of AI being welcomed, not feared, especially when examining it as a tool for furthering rhetoric, not just something to feed a prompt. The second piece was a lot more difficult to get through. I didn’t dislike it but I found myself lost a few times. That’s not a bad thing, it just took me a few reads to grasp what was being said. Both pieces challenged my tenuous understanding of rhetoric as more than an oral concept. Using available technologies/methods/strategies to best construct a rhetorical piece is not something I would consider as long as the main point sounds good. I guess that’s a little telling of how stuck in the past my writing style is.
As for what was covered in class this week: I am definitely struggling with MarkDown, which I know is sort of the point. I will say that I already really like being able to make some of my older pieces look prettier with MarkDown, though. I’m excited to make my formatting look a little more professional and not like a 12-year-old is playing around in Google Docs. I’m also not sure what I want to write a How To guide about. I don’t feel incredibly savvy at any sort of digital writing tool, especially not enough to write a How To guide about one. Talking to the people next to me made me feel better, as I realized that I wasn’t the only one struggling to find a topic.
To try to wrap a bow around this word salad, I will close with this. I’m excited to be challenged in a class that doesn’t revolve around writing a paper about literature that will appease a professor. I’m also excited to learn how to better format what I write. Presentation/appearance is probably where my current writing abilities are the weakest. It was not a bad week in Digital Writing overall.
Comments
2 responses to “Week 2 Post”
I totally relate to not really feeling like I understood the machine rhetoric piece. There were a lot of places where I was like, “I might understand this but also I really don’t know. I’ve probably just deluded myself into thinking I got it.” I really like your use of the phrase saturated culture when it came to the recomposing article. It seems like the perfect way to describe the very busy and maybe even hectic internet culture the article was trying to convey. As for MarkDown I also kind of get why it’s important but I really struggled with it at first. Hopefully it’ll get easier as I work on the project though.
Your question of whether AI rhetoric is an art/craft or a tool is a really interesting one. On my part, I think that it can be one or the other, but most of the time, it is both. The concept of AI rhetoric in and of itself is a tool, but being able to use it in an effective way is considered an art or a craft that one must master.