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.