The Blob: Moving Genres and the People They Eat Along the Way

So, Twitter has come under recent scrutiny for its part in Obama's recent speech to a joint session of Congress. Many senators and representative were Twittering while Obama gave his speech. Now the biggest criticism has been focused on ridiculousness of using Twitter at an event of such magnitude. Here is the lead to an article by Dana Milbank printed in the Seattle Times: "President Obama spoke of economic calamity and war Tuesday night in that solemn rite of democracy, the address to the joint session of Congress. In response, lawmakers whipped out their BlackBerrys and began sending text messages like high-school kids bored in math class."

The text messaging is referring to the Tweets. You are only allowed so many characters in one entry so the size and style of the tweet is similar to text messages. Now Twittering did not grow out of governmental discourse. It was the defected college Facebook crowd that made it big when they began moving from Facebook to Twitter. It was originally just a way to explain what you were doing at any point in time. But young people can't resist advocacy, and it quickly turned into a mini-blog (becuase you can only type a minimal amount as compared to a standard blog) where individuals were offering sharp, quick cultural commentary.

Now, this form eventually became so popular it expanded beyond the holds of the discourse that originally saw it to fruition. This was most visilbe in Obama's digital campain with his Twitterfeed, which reached the very same young people who made Twitter popular to begin with. Now President Obama currently has over 300,000 people following his Titterfeed (he has not updated since Dr. Martin Luther King Day). Sarah Palin now has a Twitter account. Governer Bobby Jindal has a Twitter account, on which he reminded his followers to watch his response to Obama's speach.

The possibilities for politicians to be more transparent about thier ideas are more wide open than ever before due to all the communication avenues being generated in the digital exapansion. So, why so much negativity about a Tweeting Congress? Well some of it has to do with people writing idiotic messgages. Take this example from the same article: "Then there was Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, in whose name this text message was sent at about the time the president spoke of the need to pull the country together: "Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren't going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour." A few minutes later, another message came through: 'Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer.'"

But some congress men and woman were offering decent commentary. So what is the problem? Well this is a genre that grew out a different discourse community with different agents (young people-upper level college student to young professional just out of college) with different values with different ideas about legitimate ways to communicate and connect with people. This gerne was not matured by the older generations represented in Congress. Instead, was literay forced upon then by popular demand. It is reasonable to susspect that they would not know what do with the power of instant connectivity and response. So, there were a few mishaps (news for enterntainment sake). But Twitter as a genre has the ability to engage people in conversation and call attention to certain issues. It puts ideas out on a wide market in an instant, quick accessible, and readable manner.

Take this comment from an article by Andy Carvin, NPR's social media strategist, "Flash forward to 2009, and I'm standing on the National Mall filing from Barack Obama's inauguration using tweets and text messaging, interacting directly with people around the world in real time. So it was appropriate that we spent a lot of time talking about Twitter, given how it's become perhaps the fastest tool for people to share news with the world."

"Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering" by Dorothy A. Winsor

First and foremost, this article is a very nice example of an easy-to-read discourse analysis. Winsor traces the means of text production within Engineering starting with the text itself and moving backwards to the shared ideologies that guide the social actions of these Engineers (well one in this study). These shared ideologies (beliefs about knowledge) beget shared ideas of how knowledge is created (shared methodology) and how knowledge transmited (shared rhetoric or shared genres). In the article, she points too Data sheets, graphs, progress reports and technical reports. To choose which genre is used when, situational rhetorical decisions are made to determine the best modes of delivery and style. So, the discoures determines the available means of communication (appicable rhetorics and thier corresponding genres) and then situational rhetoric specifices the choice.

This is the process through which Phillips wandered when faced with a presentation to give at an Engineering conference about an engine (go figure). So, there were certain things to consider about Engineering when this process all started. First knowledge for the report had be constructed. So their was a certain methodology for creating this knowledge that would be accepted in the discourse community of Engineering. In this case lab testing and certain procedures for collecting and recording data. The data was then recorded (memoria) in a data sheet (an acceptable genre for recording data). But it is not an acceptable genre for transmitting data. So, to present the knowledge gained, he turned to graphs and Progress Reports and Technical Reports (344). But, he had to only choose the best genre for transmitting the data. The decision was made based on a situation analysis: they used all three. But they used each one in specific way for a specific end.

So it seems the flow goes like this: ideology, discourse, methodology, rhetoric, genre, text.

Winsor also throws agency into the mix. She says that Engineers refelct and reaffirm their own agency as engineers by participating in these ideological, discursive, methodological, and rhetorical processes. Also, she comments on how Engineering as a discourse is reaffirmed through these processes due their repititon and they manners in which that repitition is stored as knowledge.

Works Cited

Winsor, Dorothy A. "Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering" in Central Works in Technical Communication. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Major Project Review

This research revolves around the idea that the user is more technologically savvy than in past years due to the increasing rate of replacement of products with updated versions.  Cell phones are an ideal example, but this concept can also be applied to video gaming systems, web browsers, email programs, Web 2.0 products.  But, the question is how is technical writing as a professional discipline responding to a user who may very well be already be equipped enough to use their product.  How is the prior knowledge of the user being considered in the design and accommodation process?

With this research, I hope to create sets of usable data about how users are becoming accommodated to the products and the ways in which technical writing are creating documentation for these users.  But I am also arguing that user-context can no longer be ignored because their prior knowledge of the generation of products and their expectations of future upgrades are directly linked to their ability to the most updated version.  

Hopefully, this study will expand the scope of usability testing and the ways in which documentation accommodates the user to the technology.  The benefits of this study are mainly professional.  The field seems currently stuck in the debate on how to create useful products, what role do users play in that production, and what does the user-context have to do with the design and accommodation processes.  The goal of this research is to approach these questions from user-centered design theory, activity theory, and humanistic conceptions of technical writing, while designing an ethical and efficient research methodology for collecting usable data.  

Therefore, the final form in which I see this study taking is a research design with an embedded literature review that maps the theoretical frameworks of user-centered design, activity theory, and humanistic rhetoric.   

The Discourse of Digital Locality

I am at my desk at 1:00 in the morning.  I teach first year composition at 8:00 in the morning.  The pigeons are nesting on my air condition unit and shitting all over my deck.  Normally, I'd scare them off, but its storming and I have an amazing sense of my own guilt.  

There, I have located myself in more ways in than necessary.  Despite all the extras, the fact is that I am at my desk and the pigeons are on the air conditioner (wall-unit by the way--the outside part).  But it is this awareness of the relationship between myself and other agents around (the closest are the pigeons for sake of example) my physical location that seems to be creating a new discourse of locality.  

In Mathew Honan's article in Wired 17.02, titled "I Am Here," he explicitly calls to attention this new discourse.  The article focus on smart phone applications that run on GPS based systems.  So, for instance, there is an application that allows you instant message someone in the vicinity who happens to be logged into the same app.  There is one in which lists Wikipedia articles about local attractions and histories.  There is another that shows the twitter feeds of everyone in your current zip-code.  The point is our locality is now some discursive action that is broadcast to agents in the local discourse community.  

But there are some interesting aspects of this yet to be explored.  For instance, Honan was constantly updating his location on various apps and social networking cites.  He comments "This is new territory, and there's no established etiquette or protocol" (74).  So essentially we are seeing the birth of discourse or a genre within a larger discourse.  I guess this somewhat similar to the birth of text messaging and the formation of text-speak.  Now the genre is fairly entrenched.  As portals to this new genre become cheaper (smart phones) I think we will begin to see standard acts of behavior like we saw with the genesis of social networking sites.  This will be an interesting thing to follow if you like genre theory, discourse analysis, and information architecture.

This last one is particularly interesting because we are putting out tons of data by just having a GPS based app read our location and turn into communicable information.   

So, since I do have a Smart Phone, I am locating myself at my computer, on my blog, next to the pigeons who are shitting on patio.  And to be an agent, you gotta be located.  

Ok, Anti-Genre and being serious

So I am serious about this anti-genre thing.  But the next step is to find out how it can be applied to something outside of a fictional character in a movie.  From what I see, an anti-genre is something this is like side effect of Lipitor or some mass produced pharmaceutical.  It is both unexpected and unwelcome but it is a product of the environment.  I guess that is why people refer to Batman as a Vigilante.  But a vigilante, while reliant on the context to maintain status, does not need to produced by that context.  So the anti-genre goes further.  Nor is it completely a free-radical, becuase the free-radical completely disassociates itself from the ideology of the discourse.  As I stated before, terrorism may fit the bill here.  

But, I also have to discover the relationship between anti-genre and the genre.  And, how can anti-genre be communication based.  Like the Joker said, "It's not about money;  It's about sending a message."      

Movement of Discourse

The anti-genre

So this whole concept of an anti-genre may actually work within the realm of the The Dark Night (the movie), but can it work anywhere else?  And of course, when I say genre, I am referring to the character in the movie, not the comic book, not the character through the various series of comics and graphic novels, and the first string of Batman movies.  As I say in my last post, I am calling the very character of Batman in The Dark Night (the movie) an anti-genre.  I say he has the qualifications of being a genre because others attempted to copy his very likeness.  He is a direct product on the ideology of Gotham.  But he is simultaneously repelled by the very system that created him.  This may also be the definition or part of the definition of a vigilante.  In literature, he may even be labeled the anti-hero.   

But, even if the label of anti-genre is correct or not (or even possible), this does not change the fact that this dynamic is occurring and reoccurring.  What I am more interested in is how this concept of anti-genre can be applied outside of a fictionalized discourse.  Can it be applied to something text-based?  I think there is a real possibility that it can.  Right now I am just keeping my eyes and ears open to various possibilities.    

Social Constructionist and Ideological view of discourse.

Looking at both of these approaches to analyzing discourse, I can't really see much of a different.  I mean, I understand the Ideologists' (Berlin and his posse) critique of the Social Constructionists (Kuhn, Bruffee).  It does seem like they view knowledge as a completely democratic construction, which is built from equal contributions of agents within the discourse community.  Of course knowledge is not necessarily formed this way in discourse community.  Some agents or agencies (in this case a group of agents in a discourse) have more power than other and control the group ideology.  But then also, that assumes that the people do not have the ability to sperepate themselves (emotionally, physically, cognitively) from that discourse and pursue another that is more favorable to that agent.  But then what keeps people in a discourse that does not make them happy or that they have no control over?

I think the formation of the Bible may provide an interesting example.  The Bible, when first collected, was controlled by a few people (clergy of the Catholic Church).  Now this story is about the Catholic relationship with the Bible.  The Bible has history well before the Catholic church, however, similar stories have been played out around this text.  

The clergy was able to control the Bible because it was only written in Latin.  The masses (not a pun) did not speak Latin (particularly the poor majority).  A promise of salvation from Earthly plight was a easy deal for those who suffered in the streets and fields of feudal Europe.  Access to such knowledge came through the clergy, who got if from the Bible, which was written in Latin, which was only understood by the educated minority.  People were "persuaded" to stay in the discourse that they did not control.  

Then came Martin Luther.   And the advent of the Bible written in a language of the people who read it.  Events like this saw the birth of alliterative discourses with a different, more democratic power structure since most of the agents were on the same level in their previous discourse.  This is where it gets interesting to study the means of production as well since this came with the inventing of the printing press.

So, it seems there is always some sense of power at work in discourse, but the distribution of the power may vary.    

Batman as Anti-Genre

Ok,  I know it sounds different.    But if I am right, then probably nothing will happen except maybe a pat on the back for the effort.  

To begin we have to clear some things.  First, I don't know what an anit-genre is.  I just know that I can't find another label for Batman's discursive actions.  Second, this ideas assumes that genre is a product of discourse.  Genre is the available means of communication or social action (in this case) that is defined by the ideology of the discourse (created and maintained by the people within the discourse community).  Third, this is viewing Gotham as a Discourse ( a discourse community at least).  

In the movie, the Joker summed up Gotham Discourse (GD) beautifully (misplaced modifier).  The mob tries to control the city.  The police try to stop the mob from controlling the city.  Everyone else acts according to whomever the power balance is leaning towards at the time.  This is a patterned process.  Everyone seems cool with the status quo.  These are acceptable social actions, discursive products.    

Then comes along Batman.  Who is, by all rights, a product of GD.  But he is freaking everyone out.  He is a product of this discourse but the agents of the discourse (the people of Gotham--police, citizens, city officials, mobsters) all view him as some kind of freak.  And he can be labeled as a genre in that fact that people try to copy what he does.  The environment is reproducing the genre. Before you can be an anti-genre you have to be a genre first (ok, that really made no sense). Sort of like either dying a hero or living long enough to see yourself become a villain.  

The funny thing is that Batman, a product of GD, is repelled by the very ideology that saw his genesis.  He can't exist without the discourse, but the discourse will not full accept him as viable genre.  The only way I can conceive of labeling this is the anti-genre.  Ok its not the only way but its the coolest.  I could go on about the Joker as an anti-genre and deeper into identity issues and agency with this but, this blog post is already way too long.  But one more quick thing.  

One other way to look at this is to view Batman and the Joker as contrastive discourse that rebelled from GD in some way to form their own parallel discourse.  Parallel Discourses just sounds awesome.