McLuhan and Baseball

I've been thoroughly enjoying a re-reading of McLuhan's Understanding Media; I wanted to share this paragraph on baseball. McLuhan articulates something I have felt without being able to express for sometime. I think my interest in sabermetric evaluations of defense and BABIP stem from an unconscious desire to complicate and de-individualize baseball. Anywho, here is McLuhan:

Just where to begin to examine the transformation of American attitudes since TV is a most arbitrary affair, as can be seen in a change so great as the abrupt decline of baseball. The removal of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles was a portent in itself. Baseball moved West in an attempt to retain an audience after TV struck. The characteristic mode of the baseball game is that if features one-thing-at-a-time. It is a lineal, expansive game which, like golf, is perfectly adapted to the outlook of an individualist and inner-directed society. Timing and waiting are of the essence, with the entire field in suspense waiting upon the performance of a single player. By contrast, football, basketball, and ice hockey are games in which many events occur simultaneously, with the entire team involved at the same time. With the advent of TV, such isolation of the individual performance as occurs in baseball became unacceptable. Interest in baseball declined, and its starts, quite as much as movie stars, found that fame had some very cramping dimensions. Baseball had been, like the movies, a hot medium featuring individual virtuosity and stellar performers. The real ball fan is a store of statistical information about previous explosions of batters and pitchers in numerous games. Nothing could indicate more clearly the peculiar satisfaction provided by a game that belonged to the industrial metropolis of ceaselessly exploding populations, stocks and bonds, and production and sales records. Baseball belonged to the age of the first onset of the hot press and the movie medium. It will always remain a symbol of the era of the hot mommas, jazz babies, of sheiks and shebas, of vamps and gold-diggers and the fast buck. Baseball, in a word, is a hot game that got cooled off in the new TV climate, as did most of the hot politicians and hot issues of the earlier decades. (Understanding Media 326)

To appreciate the passage likely requires familiarity with McLuhan's particular (and perhaps unintuitive) notions of hot and cold media. Hot media are those which sensually overwhelm the audience, such as books, movies, radio, and television; audience members do not participate in the creation of meaning as much as they are absorbed by it. Cool media, on the other hand, invite hermeneutic participation, the audience feels less as if they are receiving a finished product and more that they are engaged in the creative process. For McLuhan, such a binary was perhaps best represented by two media that we would likely consider similar today: "low definition" television versus "high definition" movies. Television was spontaneous (represented by the game show) while movies were, literally, scripted. Television was caught in the flow of lived time, while movies existed outside of time--and what could be more out of time than baseball, which follows no clock? In such light, how do we interpret baseball's contemporary emphasis on game time and continuity?

Rhetorical Thoughts on Michael Vick

This started as a comment on FB, but I figured I'd post it here. I've been thinking about this for about a week--what Michael Vick needs to do to "prove his remorse." (I assumed that this is what spurred Cody Lumpkins' FB post--remembering him to be a Falcons fan). My idea is that all he needs to do is offer a short Public Service Announcement, something like this:

"Dear America, I am truly sorry for the suffering I caused each and every animal. I have had two years in prison to reflect on the seriousness of my crimes. I hope that this message will help convince young people out there to stay away from the heinousness of dog fighting. While I ask for your forgiveness, I urge that none of us forget this incident--that it serves to help end animal cruelty."

That's all he has to say. Then, he has to do some more PSA's and donate some time to animal cruelty. In fact, Cody, I think the question becomes "how CAN'T one show remorse"--for the answer to that question, see PacMan Jones. Everyone who matters in football is ready to give this guy a second chance--Goodell, Arthur Blank, Tony Dungy (who's words probably carry the most weight).

I think his rhetorical situation needs to be informed by the failures of A-Rod's steroids apology. Beyond the fact that A-Rod lied (d'oh for thinking that the American baseball media wouldn't look into the story of someone they already despise--they/we only ignore the facts when they/we like someone), he transfered blame to a "something" other than himself. In A-Rod's case, it was "youth." "Young and stupid." Well, at least one of those were true.

Vick could go the same route, and talk about "culture"--being brought up in a culture that values dog fighting. Were I defending him (postmodernist that I am), this is the route I would go--that the outrage against Vick is a bit excessive if viewed across the access of cultural difference. We can certainly still identify it as wrong, but hopefully such an identification would come with less venom if we undermine the absolute "natural" foundation for such an indentification. A few players tried to go the "culturally relative" route, by noting that there's not much difference between dog fighting and hunting, and they were publicly lambasted. And while I agree that there is a difference between dog fighting and hunting, I would say that its not that big a difference.... BUT

This is not the rhetorical route for Vick to go. Because I believe that many people do not care about dog fighting to the degree the media would have us believe. The truly, picket-carrying outraged are out there--and they will reject Vick no matter what. But I think the majority of the public audience would be willing to give Vick a chance so long as his remorse seems heartfelt (pathos) and as long as he "owns" his misdeed (instead of projecting the wrong-doing onto an era in sports, the stupidity of youth, his brother's pharmacist, etc.). I believe Vick deserves a second chance--and I believe all the rhetorical markers are in place for him to actually get one. What remains to be seen is whether or not he will waste it.

Colbert on the"Danger" of the Internet

This comes from Colbert's interview with Keen--it is presented as something of a nightmare. But I think it adequately describes a digital/rhetorical/sophistic new media environment, one in which there is not getting outside the cave. Responding to Keen's claim that digital culture destroys objective media and criteria for truth, Colbert responds:

isn't reality something we decide?

Santos on Fish on Donoghue Take Two

My last post came on little sleep, so I thought I might try again. Actually, I already tried again in an email exchange with an old friend. He wrote to get my thoughts on Fish's piece. Here's my (hopefully) more coherent response:

As a rhetorician, I'm in a weird spot. I am a member of the humanities, sure, but not necessarily the Humanities [the remnants of the Arnold's liberal arts, those non-utilitarian caches of Culture]. I do things, I produce things, I engage actual people and practices. Although I work with "high theory," I attempt to reconcile high theory with everyday life. Rhetoric has been disparaged for the last 200 years by the very disciplines that Fish sees as dying.

Chances are this is some remnant of the Clark experience. The whole "peas in a pod" thing, our social obligation, blah, blah, blah.

Still, there is a part of me that believes education involves periods of pointless exploration (in rhetoric we refer to this as "invention"). The H/humanities excel at such intellectual wandering. Yet, in an era marked by increased demand for results, education is more and more becoming exercises in accountable delivery. It is hard to measure wandering. So we resort to teaching rather than attempt to learn.

Productive Mess Hits the Airwaves

Here's some shameless self-promotion: the new issue of Kairos includes my article with Nathaniel Rivers and Ryan Weber "Productive Mess: First-Year Composition Takes the University's Agonism Online." The article has two main arguments: first, it discusses how to better integrate CMSs into FYC. Briefly: increasing interaction and productivity requires careful, well-planned structure (arguing for heuristics)--going digital doesn't necessarily mean more engaged students. And the article provides one particular structure that we found effective.

Second--the article questions the purpose of FYC, and, in greater scope, of University education. I believe I will be writing/publishing on this more in the future. Essentially, I think the growth of digital technology will increasingly move us away from the Enlightenment University (as a center of knowledge production) and more toward the university as a center of civil discourse and engagement. Those who know me know my appreciation for Bill Readings' University in Ruins; I want to spend some more time with that book. I believe Readings' themes permeate the entire article, even if there is limited discussion of his work.

Jack McCoy, Ciceronian Rhetoric, and the art of Pathetic Conclusions

Tomorrow I'm planning a quick, introductory lecture on Ciceronian argument. As such, I'll be referring to the six-part structure extracted from the Catiline Orations and discussed at length in De Inventione. In brief:

• Exordium [prepares the hearer... this can be creative, it depends on kairos; thinking of They Say, I Say, this is where you make the case for "who cares?" or "why care?"]
• Narration ["the facts of the case," here is an objective overview, or a statement of a problem]
• Partition [here is where the speaker lays out exactly what they will be arguing; defining the scope of there work. What they hope to accomplish]
• Confirmation [the presentation of evidence]
• Refutation [respond to possible objections]
• Peroration [sums up the argument, usually incites pathos of some kind]

In putting this lecture together, I hoped to find an example of one of Jack McCoy's closing arguments from Law and Order, by far my favorite television show. Nathaniel River, Ryan Weber and I have talked about doing an article comparing Law and Order and CSI in light of Sophist (non-Aristoletian) rhetoric vs. Platonic philosophy. In CSI, cases are always solved "beyond a shadow of a doubt." The show is full of cliches testifying that "the evidence doesn't lie" or "there is always a clue." There's even a few episodes in which Grissom staunchly denies that "human observation" (i.e., eyewitnesses) shouldn't be considered as evidence at all. In the end, a CSI episode wraps up nice and neat (even if there is at times some question as to whether the crime was justified). As a rhetorician, I prefer the "mess" of Law and Order: at the end of every episode, regardless of the legal decision, there is always residual moral ambiguity. In Law and Order, stasis is never as absolute as it is in CSI. In CSI, a dead body always signifies a crime to be solved. In Law and Order, a dead body signifies a social problem. Whether there was even a crime is often a matter of the morality of the jury (and viewer).

Anywho, in searching for a video clip, I came across a PDF article "The Art of Closing" on the impact of Law and Order on juridical practice. While I had heard of the CSI effect (the idea that the show has made jury's expect rigorous scientific evidence for every conviction), I had not heard of a Law and Order effect. Essentially the author, attorney David A. Gradwhol, argues that the performative and emotive dimensions of McCoy's closings are having a noticeable impact on jury expectations. I think his conclusions make sound advice for any rhetorician:

• While attorneys might not be able to reduce their closings to the five-minute (or less) Law and Order versions, they should push for focused brevity: "a focused closing has the power to etch the merits of the client's position onto the jurors' minds."
• Avoid jargon: "lawyers should not confuse the jury with obscure legal terms... The lawyers' verbal arsenal should include analogies and key words that elicit strong mental and emotional images for the jury."
• While actual closings might not be able to offer moral soliliquies, they can strive "to keep the moral high ground... as they may present issues of moral concern about honoring contracts or providing an injured person with the compensation he or she deserves"

When teaching "academic writing," I have always struggled to find a helpful way to present conclusions. But I think these two final points offer a possibility of conceptualizing the conclusion as an emphasis on "why care?" Sure, the conclusion needs to remind us of the logos for the argument, but it should wrap this logos in pathos. The conclusion elicits cooperation by arousing passion. Truth can never be divorced from desire--and a strong conclusion needs to remind the audience why they should care to endorse a particular truth.

Expository Writing as Digital Citizenship

Its a new semester, and I am teaching two sections of upper-division expository writing. I am excited to return to a previous approach: blogging as composition. Last time I tried this with freshman we and we were quite pleased with the results. Here's what this semester's course description looks like:

This course is an attempt to reimagine writing instruction, moving away from 20th century models based on print scholarship and toward 21st century models of digital citizenship. My premise: the purpose of the contemporary university has to be more attentive to maximizing new communicative tools, including blogs, wikis, aggregators, bookmarks, and networking technologies.

Traditional writing classes, especially those “academic” in nature, instruct students to write for imagined audiences. Unfortunately, in practice, this is rarely the case—students end up writing for “a general conversation of mankind.” For many complicated reasons, cutting edge writing instruction has denounced writing for this universal / incorporeal audience. Yet, few alternatives present themselves to instructors: who can students write to? Can authentic audiences be a part of writing instruction?

This class is my experimental answer to this question. I am refiguring the way we teach writing. This semester you will be writing to an audience of your choosing—but you will have to demonstrate to me an authentic relationship with this audience. You will be entering into a discourse community, participating in its social conventions, and reporting back to the class on its values, purposes, and intrigues.

To explain: this will be a course on blogging. This is not to say that this will be a course that uses blogs. I am proposing something a bit more extensive than that. I am proposing that blogging will not simply augment the material of the course, it will compose the material of the course. Playfully, composing blogs will be the expository exercise.

Simultaneously, we will be reading, discussing, and (of course) writing about the viability of blogging as an approach to expository writing. We will discuss the goals and purposes of the traditional expository class in relation to your experiences in this class. We will use a contemporary academic argument handbook, They Say, I Say, assessing whether the values of academic prose translate into blogging. In their work, Graff and Birkenstein argue that “rote instruction [has] indeed encouraged passivity and drained writing of its creativity and dynamic relation to the social world” (xv). This class, then, can be understood as an attempt to revitalize and reprioritize writing. I am looking to teach a form of writing that is creative, dynamic, an integrally tied to your social world.

This work will culminate in a discussion on the broader conceptualization of blogging within our social sphere. You will use your experiences as a blogger to respond to the contemporary debate concerning the rigor and value of blogs.

This course will be run as a creative writing workshop. I imagine all of you will be writing on different topics (and entering into different communities, crafting different voices, different styles of blogs). Our class sessions, then, will be dedicated to providing peers with meaningful and helpful feedback (critical in its least pejorative sense). You should be prepared to share your work, ideas, and thoughts in a respectful manner.

The course, then, is an extension of my previous semester: on the purpose of higher education. I am further attempting to move beyond the Ruins of the Enlightenment institution, the knowledge factory, and toward something more social, democratic (?), and connected.

I not We, Me not US

As I'm finishing my Levinas chapter, I'm feeling how hard it is to apply his ethics to academic writing--at least my academic writing. I am so used to using the plural, collective pronouns: we and us, that it feels disorienting to use I and me. But I do believe it turns me into a more naked, and thus, more ethical voice. It prevents me from climbing the mountain.

Of course, to those unfamiliar with Levinas, it leaves me exposed. This is Levinas' point--to always write as exposed, to invite the response, to risk the worst. But for someone accustomed to writing with confidence, as the authority, it is odd--in a very affective way--to offer rather than expound, to posit rather than claim, to say rather than tell.

To My Students

Every semester I write a letter to my students that comments on my position in relation to the readings we are working through that semester. I delivered my letter early this semester, since I am trying to get them to think about the differences between what Vitanza identifies as writing and w-r-i-t-i-n-g; the former designates what we teach in textbooks and classes, the latter attempts to signify (impossibly) the broad expanse of all possible written expression. And then some.

Any who, for a bit of background, we've been reading about the historic purpose of higher education. We spent the first six weeks reading about five historic conceptions of higher ed: Plato (to produce philosopher kings) , Cicero (to produce citizens), Petrarch (to deal with life's hardships), Kant (to increase scientific knowledge), and Americans (economic advancement and vocationalism). Its been an interesting semester for me in terms of learning of my students aspirations and the intellectual climate at South Florida. Here's my letter to my students (those who wrote Trickert papers will recognize, no doubt, a particular tone and rhythm--I'm starting to realize how much I miss the looseness of those papers):

I know that I strive to be a Ciceronian--someone who values the voice of all people, who encourages all people to participate in the political and social conversations of their time. Unlike either Kant or Plato, I reject the concept of a progressive conversation through history. Although, on the flip side, I do believe it is important to know something of the voices that have come before us before you attempt to join in a conversation. An opinion is only valuable if it is based on something more than opinion. It is in this valuing that I begin to look like a Platonist... a charge that makes me cringe.

To detail why this charge would make me cringe would take quite a bit of time. Quickly, I will say that I do place value on the ideal that everyone should be free to live their life their own way. My academic career, and personal life, is dedicated to preventing another Holocaust (please forgive the logical jump). And the root of the Holocaust, in my opinion, lies in the fundamental premise that we can know the Truth. And that we can use the Truth to judge others.

If I object to religion, I do not do so for the same reasons as Kant. Everyone, I believe, has the right to worship who or what he s/he chooses. No one can claim to have a rational answer to the question of metaphysics. None of us can ever know, with certainty, what lies beyond. My objection to organized religion stems from its moral obligation to help the “less fortunate.” The same system that identifies "misfortunate" also provides the logic for solutions. Final solutions. Answers are solutions. In the face of Right answers, I ask my God for the strength to ask all the wrong questions. Sometimes she listens. Sometimes, in silence, in passivity, she reminds me to question her existence.

As to the arts, I support them. I think they help us to imagine possibilities. It is through this imaginative exploration that we can avoid the trappings of Reason--the passion for singular answers. To Plato I say: we do not escape imprisonment solely through the employment of reason. Imagination is not simply a means to convince the masses. Imprisonment can come from blindly dedicating ourselves to any one thing. Art serves as a way of diversifying our perspective, of challenging what we "know" to be true, of opening ways of hearing.

Lately, I’m feeling a bit Petrarchian. I apply everything I read to my own life. I draw examples to my own life. I even ask my students to write about me. Such is not meant to be an egotistical move (which, undoubtedly, my detractors would perceive it). Rather, it is meant to open myself up for inquiry, to improve myself as a teacher, and to force me to reflect on whether "me" is "me." If it is egotistical, it is so in a critical sense—it is a questioning of what puts the me in me. We all narrate our own stories. We are always just before the climax. Now is a product of a future we wish to be(come). But, ultimately, the future frustrates ourselves.

If I disagree with the structure of this class, I do so for two reasons. First, the class assumes a very Kantian perspective—i.e., you write for the Great Conversation (what we call academic writing). Perhaps I could more "work" the assignments to meet my own goals. Perhaps someone can do a final project on how I might do this. Imagine how, working with this material, you would teach the course. Second, true writing emerges from complex engagements. Writing is the thought that happens when you stop trying to write a paper and just start writing. It is when you chase down the trace of something Other in a moment when you suspend the will to order. When you [can’t] become something you couldn’t be. I'd like to do more of this writing, writing that more reflects w-r-i-t-i-n-g than writing. I'm trying to (w-)r-i-t-e ((to) you) right now.

Not the Negation of Science

My love affair with Kevin Kelly continues; his recent post on the non-death of theory is definitely worth a read. Kelly responds to Chris Anderson's recent article on The Death of Theory, in which Anderson argues that massive, computational approaches to problem solving are replacing traditional, hypothesis-driven, science. Kelly laments that Anderson attempted to negate theory rather than promote an additional method for problem-solving. Here's the highlight:

My guess is that this emerging method will be one additional tool in the evolution of the scientific method. It will not replace any current methods (sorry, no end of science!) but will compliment established theory-driven science. Let's call this data intensive approach to problem solving Correlative Analytics. I think Chris squander a unique opportunity by titling his thesis "The End of Theory" because this is a negation, the absence of something. Rather it is the beginning of something, and this is when you have a chance to accelerate that birth by giving it a positive name. A non-negative name will also help clarify the thesis. I am suggesting Correlative Analytics rather than No Theory because I am not entirely sure that these correlative systems are model-free. I think there is an emergent, unconscious, implicit model embedded in the system that generates answers. If none of the English speakers working on Google's Chinese Room have a theory of Chinese, we can still think of the Room as having a theory. The model may be beyond the perception and understanding of the creators of the system, and since it works it is not worth trying to uncover it. But it may still be there. It just operates at a level we don't have access to.

Sure, I've been spending too much time lately writing on Levinas' concept of absolute alterity (d'Autrui). But I am repeatedly blown away at how often the writing of the Web 2.0 crowd echoes the sentiments of postmodern metaphysicians. Fucking awesome.

New Media Rhetoric and Wikipedia

I thought I would share my conference proposal for International Society for the History of Rhetoric conference. I have a feeling its probably a bit too contemporary (ie, it mentions computers) for this conference, but there's no harm in trying. The talk would be building off of what I'll be discussing at RSA later this month: though that talk focuses on the complex ways [non-Platonic/Aristotelian] in which Wikipedia establishes credibility. I'll post links to that material later. I guess my preoccupation with wikis extends from their complete "newness"- there's really nothing in history that compares to the magnitude to which they precipitate, harness, and purpose human interaction and thinking. Anywho, here's the proposal:

In We the Media, journalist turned new media proponent Dan Gillmor argues that digital technologies present us with an entirely new form of communication; in addition to “one-to-one” communication (which we can identify with dialectic) and “one-to-many” (rhetoric), digital technologies offer “many-to-many” communication (26). As Gillmor demonstrates through an examination of contemporary blogs, forums, wikis, and social aggregators, audiences are no longer exterior, static entities to be acted upon. They are now far more active agents in a far more dynamic communicative process.

I argue that this developing communicative medium will further push rhetoric to break away from its Platonic / Aristotelian preoccupation with objective truth and persuasion. As audiences gain more response ability, rhetors will have to work with audiences rather than upon them. The dynamism of digital communicative environments, in addition to their emphasis on collecting intelligence, will call for a rhetoric more concerned with fostering collaboration than producing terminal synthesis.

This does not mean that rhetoric should abandon all discussion of persuasion, only that its focus needs to expand to include non-synthetic negotiation of difference. I will offer as example of this dual need a presentation of Wikipedia. The “article” dimension of a Wikipedia entry reflects a traditional interest in truth and knowledge production. But every Wikipedia entry is more than just its “article”: it is a massive collection of pages, including a lively “discussion” section and a history of all changes made to a page. Every knowledge object becomes embedded in a web of social relations. These other, more social, dimensions to each entry symbolize the ways in which “many-to-many” communication is changing our information landscape and suggest how rhetoric needs to augment persuasion with an interest in cooperation.

I will conclude by arguing this transformation is anticipated in the work of Burkian rhetorical theorist Jim Corder. Throughout the mid-1980’s Corder argued that the work of rhetoric extended beyond persuasion to something more akin to “love.” Designed to deal with the intensified wrangle of the digital barnyard, a rhetoric of cooperation builds off of Corder and Burke by emphasizing that the ends of rhetoric aren’t always concerned with persuasion—sometimes they are concerned with keeping the conversation hospitable, active, and inviting.

New Media Rhetoric

The first paragraph of George Oates' recent A List Apart article "Community: From Little Things, Big Thigns Grow" reflects something I've been trying to articulate for a few years:

People don’t like being told what to do. We like to explore, change things around, and make a place our own. Hefty design challenges await the makers of websites where people feel free to engage; both with the system itself and with each other. Embrace the idea that people will warp and stretch your site in ways you can’t predict—they’ll surprise you with their creativity and make something wonderful with what you provide.

I've been writing the theoretical chapter of my dissertation, a chapter that focuses on Levinas' rejection of Cartesian consciousness, the primacy of ontology, and the fetish for Being. Along the way, I've come to recognize why Levinas (and myself) distrust Platonic / Aristotelian rhetoric: it presumes a rhetorician acting upon an audience. Audience members are framed at best as deliberating judges or at worst as passive receptacles.

But, by empowering audiences, equipping them with responsibility, new media technologies oppose this imposed passivity. For better or worse. Perhaps we will lose patience. Perhaps we won't listen long enough before we begin to speak. Or perhaps we will. I admit I only read the first few paragraphs of the article before I felt compelled to write a post, to respond, to create, to link, to contribute. And what we need is a rhetoric that focuses on these dynamics--group dynamics. A working with rather than a working on. In Oates' article we hear a call of what such a rhetoric might look like:

Any community—online or off—must start slowly, and be nurtured. You cannot “just add community.” It simply must happen gradually. It must be cared for, and hosted; it takes time and people with great communication skills to set the tone and tend the conversation.

When Flickr was born, Caterina Fake and I spent many hours greeting new members personally. We opened up chat windows with each new visitor to say “Hi! I work here, and I’d love to help you get started, if you have any questions.” We also provided public forums where staff were present and interactive. Those decisions proved crucial, because apart from creating points where we could inject a certain culture, it was all so personal.

If you want to stir your audience on a rapidly growing community site, take advantage of what we learned—hire a community manager. Or two. You’ll need a clever communicator with a lot of experience being online to help welcome people and provide ongoing support as your community grows. Show your personality and be available. Flickr’s tone is not necessarily suitable for every community, but the point is, the tone is evident everywhere you look.

I like that, in describing Flickr's origins, Oates states that they were looking to construct a culture. Rhetors can still have a purpose, they can still seek to act upon, to persuade (to use a word that I consider quite dirty). They retain a sense of agency. But "action" is framed as dialectical- or, and we don't have a word for this yet- plural-ectical. Multiple? Complex? Rhetoricians are clever communicators; clever [digital] communicators are those who generate discussion among persons; discussion, interaction, contact: the basis of a functional community.

For a few centuries, or millennia (?), intellectual activity has been primarily identified as an individual activity, even if the end result of this activity contributes to a society of scholars or Great Conversation. It would seem we are approaching a new era in which intellectual activity, while at times still very much a singular experience, is also at other times very much different from this tradition. Here's the idea I've been tripping over: might our new media come to represent a bridge between two long opposed intellectual traditions: rhetoric and dialectic? Is this the explication of Dan Gilmor's claim that the internet, for the first time, provides us with many to many conversation? Excuse the questions, but this is one of those ideas that I realize I should have put together awhile ago. Its one of those ideas that I've been teaching to long before I could articulate.

Tools such as del.icio.us and Google Docs are beginning to reshape our intellectual landscape. I am interested in the development of rhetoric (and composition) pedagogy that addresses these possibilities; and I believe we can turn to other disciplines, conversations, people (such as Oates) to see what kinds of preparation could benefit 21st century citizens.

Future of Sports

For the past few years I've been arguing that the steroids controversy in baseball is about much more that the purity of sport- it touches the incredible transformations medical science will bring to biology. It is about our relationship to our bodies. We might go as far as to call it the next great imperialization, as we move "in."

Sports Illustrated has a story this week on Dr. Se-Jin Lee- a professor of molecular biology and genetics- who has isolated the genes regulating muscle generation. The slant of the story, of course, is how such procedures could further exacerbate problems with performance enhancement in professional sports; but this misses the larger point. From the article:

Lee is pushing the frontier of genetic research into muscle building because the same breakthroughs that could boost performance in sports might also bring about a medical revolution. Advances could not only mitigate the effects of diseases like muscular dystrophy but also give senior citizens back their strength--which, often, would amount to giving them back their lives.

And:

Thanks to the Human Genome Project, someday all of us could carry our entire genetic blueprint on a microchip, which we'd present to doctors during medical treatments.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this article and the broader issue. Though I try to take care of my body (working out, Edy's slow-churned, etc.), I've never considered my body sanctimoniously. If it didn't work, and I could "replace" it, no problem. I've also always been sympathetic to Cipher from the Matrix- I'll take a nice, virtual existence over a shitty "real" world everyday of the week. No hesitation. Hey, its all virtual anyway.

I think what this story touches upon, the reason I felt compelled to post something, is that is signals the approach of the debate that will frame the early 21st century in terms of science, ethics, and humanity. If the atomic bomb was the symbol of the 20th century, then, perhaps, the microscopic gene will be the symbol of the 21st. We will have to articulate, and in that articulation limit, what a human should, and perhaps, will be (or be able to become). I sit somewhere in between the silent poles of the article: between an idealistic appreciation (and, as I approach 32, expectation) for the future and an apocalyptic sense of foreboding - a feeling that we tread in areas we are not ready to go. Throughout history, humans haven't always been the most responsible explorers.

Sometimes the "Rhetoric of Change" Really Means Change

I wanted to share Norm Scheiber's article "The Audacity of Data" on Obama's economic theory. It seems that Obama strays from traditional political philosophy in favor of something which Scheiber labels as "non-ideological" but which I might refer to as more complex (in a Mark C. Taylor sense), dare I say more rhetorical. Let me explain.

First, Scheiber explains that contemporary economic theory is going through a kind of sea change- the old (read:modern) methods, which relied on a mythical "perfectly rational" human actor as a foundation for its theory, are being challenged. If you've read anything on the history of complexity theory, then you know that this actor has never existed. Economic theorists were among the first to see the social significance of complexity. The radicals began abandoning top-down, hierarchical models for explaining ALL human behavior in favor of messy, but more valid, insights into particular... well let's call them economic ecologies (see Waldrip for a very readable if annoyingly hero-izing account of complexity's rise). All the development of modern economic theory is a prime example of what goes wrong when you become a slave to your deductive theory: you create a wonderful, "perfect" model that doesn't in anyway relate to how people actually live their life. D'oh. Perhaps it explains how people should live their life- but that's a very, very different thing. I'm thinking here of a favorite saying of my friend Nathaniel Rivers from Kenneth Burke: beware of confusing "is" with "ought." Hey, Nathaniel, can you give me a source on this?

On to Obama. First, let's not make the mistake of labeling Obama as non-ideological. Everyone lives according to an ideology, if we understand ideology to mean the systems of representations that underlie and inform our daily lived experience. And I'm recalling that definition from Althusser, thanks to Google I can add: "the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of life" (qtd. in Michael G. Cooke). Scheiber, of course, belongs to a different discourse community- I just don't want any Marxists breathing down our neck for the next few paragraphs.

What we might say, however, and what Scheiber details quite clearly, is that Obama's theoretical approach to economics (and politics) is anti-idealist and anti-deductive, eschewing overarching theories in favor of localized action. And Scheiber works hard to detail that this doesn't equate to being non-academic; if anything, Obama is working to put himself in contact with cutting-edge academics whose non-traditional approaches run against normal political wisdom. Quote: "the Obama wonks [and this is a loving term] tend to be inductive— working piecemeal from a series of real-world observations." He compares the Obamanauts to the Clintonites, noting that while the latter wanted to institute massive top-down changes, the former works within existing paradigms, tweaking what works and exorcising what doesn't. Here's a kick-ass metaphor:

Think of the contrast here as the difference between science-fiction writers and engineers. Reich and Galston are the kinds of people who'd sketch out the idea for time travel in a moment of inspiration. Goolsbee et al. could rig up the DeLorean that would actually get you back to 1955.

O.k., maybe a bit over the top. But it makes my brain tingle. Lest we think this approach isn't rigorous, Scheiber follows up:

And yet, just because the Obamanauts are intellectually modest and relatively free of ideology, that doesn't mean their policy goals lack ambition. In many cases, the opposite is true. Obama's plan to reduce global warming involves an ambitious cap-and-trade arrangement that would lower carbon emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. But cap-and-trade--in which the government limits the overall level of emissions and allows companies to buy and sell pollution permits--is itself a market-oriented approach. The companies most efficient at cutting emissions will sell permits to less efficient companies, achieving the desired reductions with minimal drag on the economy.

The biggest change Obama might bring to politics is a grass-roots, complex, contextualized approach to politics forgoes the rhetoric of "big changes" in favor of something different- something non-utopian but a pragmatic sensibility that works from within. While this approach might not be quite as aptly rhetorical for the current political field, it just might change the way the game is played.

Let's try that.

del.icio.us (victory-is-mine)

Meg and I are preparing for our first real date since Rowan was born (6 months)- tonight's Ben Folds concert. I wish I saw him with the Five, but I'm still excited for the show.

I just sent of a webtext on the pedagogical dimensions of del.icio.us, the social bookmarking technology of social bookmarking technologies. Seriously, del.icio.us changed my life. I submit to any non-believer (i.e., non-user) the Firefox test- just try surfing the web wish del.icio.us for a week. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

As a bit of a sneak-peak, to celebrate the victory-is-mine moment of getting this off to the C&C special edition editor, I thought I would share a portion of the introduction that covers the theoretical implications of tagging. This works has a direct link to my dissertation in its focus on how digital technology contributes to the widespread, ongoing paradigm shift from Being to becoming, from product to process, from The Self to the group, from Truth to contingency. Here it is:

Beyond these benefits, the most significant advantage of del.icio.us concerns its method of cataloging entries: tagging. del.icio.us defines tags as:

...one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on del.icio.us. They're a little bit like keywords but non-hierarchical. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like and easily rename or delete them later. Tagging can be a lot easier and more flexible than fitting your information into preconceived categories or folders.

Tagging does not seek to replicate a physical organization system for information; there's no "files" being placed in "folders." In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson points out the ontological/categorical/strict-taxonomic organization of systems such as the Dewey decimal system, though effective organizational strategies for physical objects, fail to capitalize on the unique, non-physical properties of digital information (156-159). Such top-down, hierarchical systems are designed to properly "place" physical objects. Tagging represents a mode of organization that can only be realized once information becomes digital and is thus no longer tied to the limitations of physical place. Tagged data has no singular proper place- users in folksonomies such as del.icio.us can simultaneously tag data in multiple ways, allowing it to simultaneously exist across any number of spaces. Rather than attempting to organize information according to pre-existing, structured categories, Anderson imagines

a world of ad-hoc organization, determined by whatever makes sense at the time. That's more like a big pile of stuff on a desk instead of rows of items stringently arranged on shelves. Sure it may seem messy, but that's just because it's a different kind of organization: spontaneous, contextual order, easily reordered into a different context as need be. (159)

Thinking of del.icio.us, we can add "idiosyncracy" to Anderson's description of tagging as a mode of organization. Each del.icio.us user is likely to tag pages differently. Such a random system might not be as "neat" as the Dewey decimal system, but its flexibility and fluidity allow it to effectively capture what Suriowecki and others refer to as "the wisdom of crowds." To overstate the theoretical implications: del.icio.us can be seen as a collective attempt to explore, organize, and share the web underwritten by a spirit of enthusiasm and generosity ("Look what I found!") rather than one of mastery or colonization ("We must order this"). While an extended discussion of the impact of tagging and digitality is beyond my scope here, those interested should see Dave Weinberger's insightful Everything is Miscellaneous which ambitiously approaches a new metaphysics for digital information (see especially pages 92-95 for how del.icio.us and tagging contribute to this effort; see also his webtext "The Hyperlinked Metaphysics of the Web"). Interested parties should also give Clay Shirky's seminal "Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags" some attention.

Reputation as Ethos for the Responsible Netizen

I picked up the quizercise from Karl Stolley (who, I am pretty sure, just adapted Janice Lauer's "writing opportunity"): every Monday, before we begin discussing the week's readings, I ask students some kind of question that calls on them to connect the reading to the larger goals of the class. This week, I opened with a discussion of the importance of MLA citation (since I had caught a few students liberally borrowing material without proper citation). We had read from Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs for class that day, and I asked them the following: focusing on a specific passage or idea from Smart Mobs, explain why an English teacher might discuss the importance of MLA citation before discussing Smart Mobs. Circular? You betcha! But I like giving them these kinds of meta-questions, just to see how well they are beginning to understand my underlying aspirations for the course.

Often, I write answers to my own quiz questions--though I give myself some liberties to stray off-topic (I give my students the same liberties, essentially they have ten minutes to prove to me that they have done the reading!). Here's what I wrote in response to my own question:

In Smart Mobs, author Howard Rheingold suggests that the most productive social networks develop "bottom-up" measures for establishing authority and filtering out free riders. He writes:

Self-monitoring is part of successful grassroots collaboration, a kind of many-to-many surveillance by mutual consent. If governance is to be democratic rather than Hobbesian, maintenance of social order requires technologies of mutual control."

We can think of citation as a kind of surveillance system constructed by the mutual consent of scholars and researchers. Through citation, scholars pay respect to the intellectual work of others, acknowledging contributions even as they criticize oversights. And, although MLA standards might at times come off as Hobbesian, we should remember that these standards change in response to new technologies through grass-roots practice (right?)

The digital world makes it quite easy to bypass such grassroot intellectual systems. As such, many Universities and academic institutions are turning to more top-down, rigid structures to ensure reputation (such Turnitin.com) or outlawing the use of digital environments altogether (such as the movement away from Wikipedia and digital sources).

I strive for a different solution. Rather than ignoring the pitfalls digital technologies engender, I seek to face them heads-on, discussing the epistemological and ethical challenges digital environments place on our intellectual traditions. Specifically, I believe that citation of web sources encourages students to be responsible, reputable net-i-zens.

End response. That's been sitting in a text-edit file on my desktop for a few days now, I figured rather than saving it to a corner of my hard-drive, I'd just shoot it out on the interweb. I've got to write my letter of application for my job market group this weekend, so perhaps I can revisit some of those ideas...(the current draft I have, which is terrible, discusses my dissertation, approach to new media, and approach to teaching in terms of fostering cohabitation and linking classical and contemporary theory to practice).

A Sign of the Apocolypse

I had another post written up and ready to go last night, when I came across this NYTimes article on a chef suing several posh New York restaurants for stealing her menu. I laughed it off, dismissed it as crazy, and went to bed.

But all morning the lunacy is driving me crazy. And I think its because is seems to me that capitalism is beginning to fight itself. And the side of capitalism I support is clearly losing. Let me explain.

First, let me share the portion of the article that raises my blood pressure:

Charles Valauskas, a lawyer in Chicago who represents a number of restaurants and chefs in intellectual property matters, called their discovery of intellectual property law “long overdue” and attributed it to greater competition as well as the high cost of opening a restaurant.

“Now the stakes are so high,” he said. “The average restaurant can be millions of dollars. If I were an investor I’d want to do something to make sure my investment is protected.”

Ms. Charles’s investment was modest. She built Pearl Oyster Bar for about $120,000 — a cost that in today’s market qualifies as an early-bird special.

She acknowledged that Pearl was itself inspired by another narrow, unassuming place, Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. But she said she had spent many months making hundreds of small decisions about her restaurant’s look, feel and menu.

Let's ignore the obvious: that her restaurant was inspired by another. We've all read Lessig, we know most of our classics are adaptations of other classics, that the fetish of original thought is a perversion of some Romantic ideals injected with steriods. What really bothers me is Valauskas' comment that an investor [in a restaurant] would want to do something to protect an investment. I completely agree. Do you know what she can do? Cook a better lobster roll. Cook better fried clams. Just f#cking cook better.

Isn't that the spirit of capitalism? Free-market competition. We all have access (at least theoretically) to the materials, now who can put them to best use? Or, I should say, that was the spirit of capitalism, which is now lost under an "protect ip" culture that makes Big Brother look like a comforting Uncle. Again, Lessig spelled this out for us: applying 19th century [PHYSICAL] industrial property laws to a 21st century [INTELLECTUAL] service economy is going to stifle our society's ability to create and compete on a global level.

I understand that the design of a restaurant, like the design of a website, is work. And that work should be rewarded. That work should be protected from theft. But not adaptation. The contemporary disdain for any kind of remixing or sampling is becoming more and more reactionary to me. And now that I'm about to be a dad, I 'm thinking about what kind of world my son/daughter will inherit. If things continue like this, then it won't be one in which America is near the front of the first world. This post is one of my contributions (with teaching, with digital activism) to changing it. So, if an adult Thomas Edward or Rowan Margaret happens to find this post, daddy did what he could, which wasn't much.

Sigh. At least I got that off my chest (catharsis is good).

Ignorance is Bliss

Last night our dulah said "The more civilized you are, the harder it is to give birth." We we talking about Lamaze, breathing strategies, and how to remain focused during labor. The key seems to be to shut your consciousness off. Let all of our civilized cogito fade away. Trick your consciousness to turn off. Let your body do its job.

The more I learn about delivery, the more I appreciate SJ's Mind Wide Open. Our conscious mind is such a small part of our total intelligence--our body is thinking in ways that our consciousness can't imagine.