Weird thought: while reading Baron's essay, two conflicts appeared at the beginning while he described literacy technologies, their beginnings, and those who oppose them. These people who tend to feel threatened by these technologies fear either one of two things: they either feel that technology is inferior to older styles of writing, or that this style of writing is at great risk for creating fraud. I rarely hear the latter complaint form some of the purists of writing and rhetoric. They never complain that the actual written word could be taken for fraud other than through plagiarism. Are these critics one and the same? Do these types of critics have different thoughts, or do they care more for purity than exploration.

Also, in Sonoski's piece, he brings up a point about how reading teleintertext creates a vast opportunity for what he calls "hyperreading." He does however bring up one quote from a like-minded person where he says "hyper reading allows for no logic," and "material is chosen not because it's a privileged text, but because it's easily available." Does he have the same concerns as those purists who believe that only printed texts should be valued and admired? Are we really becoming dumber from staring at screens all day instead of viewing texts on the paper and holding them in our hands, allowing those texts to process within our minds for a while instead of for a matter of seconds?

Thompson and McCloud

Interesting on how just recently we received two different perspectives on how visuals affect the human conscious; either positively or negatively.

Thompson seems to argue that visualization is not necessarily a bad form of communication; it is simply different, and in some ways more affective.

Yet, with the article on television from Cooper, visualization is the lesser form of communication that shortens our attention spans and distorts our perception of reality.

What does everyone else think of that? Is rhetoric through visuals improving or destroying humanity's ability to communicate, or is it a balancing act that we need to sort out for ourselves? I'd like to hear multiple opinions on this issue.

Another question I wish to raise: in chapter 6 of McCloud's comic ( I have no idea what else to call it), the concern appears to arrise as to whether the written word became to be more appreciated than the image itself. The article seems to argue that the written word was given more attention and detail because more abstract meaning can be discovered from it, whereas the image became more, "representational and specific than abstract or symbolic" (McCloud).

Do you agree with these interpretations or not? (Again, multiple opinions please?)

Stroupe, Jacobs, and Hill

The statement that struck me the most in Stroupe's article was on page 611, when he says "Any pairing of instructional impulse could serve the comparison that follows because we are concerned with what is happening on the level not so much of technique or even theory, but of cultural impulse: that of verbal development as opposed to visual display." That really struck me simply because the study of literary theory and theories of writing hadn't changed that significantly. We always try to explore the "political landscapes that engross writing in general, while studying less of how technique is used in technical writing through visual backdrops such as the web.

Similar to Hill's article, I found the page where he discusses how much meaning can occur from technical documents. One would believe that giving simple instructions or explain certain situations in the most mundane, scientific fashion wouldn't require being analyzed to find hidden meanings. It is interesting to see how much language can carry through to give more meaning and purpose than originally intended.

grant-davie and Covino and Jolliffe

While reading Grant-Davie's article on rhetorical situations and the surrounding factors that affect them, I couldn't help but wonder if he seemed to leave out some important possibilities that could happen in the situations that involve the discourse he is analyzing. In the article, he discusses how exigence becomes the situation that is in need of the audience and the rhetors to respond to it in order to become more coherent. This makes enough sense. This appears to be the normal study of cause and effect, or at least bearing some similarity to it. But he doesn't seem to grasp how free will among humans could affect these situations in rare occasions. Someone in the audience could chose not to respond to the situation, immediately discounting the discourse. Or someone could respond to the discourse in a different way, resulting in an unexpectedly positive or negative outcome that the discourse didn't intend to pursue.

While reading the article of what rhetoric means, I was actually taken aback by how the authors describe those who shape rhetoric to fit a specific idea and pursue their own personal interests. They describe these individuals as "special interest groups." Most people think of this term as groups that pursue their own agendas and manipulate government officials, law enforcement officials, and other authority figures to do their bidding. I was just struck by the way they seemed to bring real social ideas into the discussion of language and comparing how people can affect society and language in similar ways using similar tactics.