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06/21/2004 Archived Entry: "TechRhet"

The TechRhet thread on weblogs is picking up some steam out on the Web. Jenny goes after it here and Richard Long briefly here. Collin's over here, and Samantha is here. (all these "blog links" make me feel like a gen-you-ine blogger, hot damn!).
So my take - since I'm in the mix on the listserv, sort of....
The thread is so way off but not for the reasons so far pointed out (don't be a know it all, Rice!).
A. It's not really meta talk so much - the blogosphere is full of blog meta talk already. This hardly comes close to the kind of meta talk you can find on any given Sunday.
B. It's a few people with invested interests in their own pedagogical missions - which are tied to financial interests - dismissing a technology (even if 20 years ago they saw themselves as the hot dudes pushing computers and writing).
C. It's being quickly confused as the battle between those who are tech-geeks and those who aren't (this is a very typical knee jerk reaction in composition studies (or at least on TechRhet) whenever technology-talk surfaces: "Oh, you're just a geek. That's too complicated for me” – Uh, no. You missed the point.).
D. It quickly falls back onto empirical observation: If blogs are good for writing, prove it! When that's not how writing works. That's how assessment works. Big difference. That difference continues to keep composition studies outside of the ways people write with technology. That difference also reduces university writing to student writing, and not writing. HUGE difference. If you think like that, you will never get how technology shapes writing.
E. It's forgetting the most important thing: FOLKS, PEOPLE ARE WRITING. All the talk about students (or in general, people) not wanting to write (or, of course, read) runs into trouble when you talk about blogs. Blogs are not an end all, nor the next best thing. But one thing which has happened, and which the homepage was unable to do, is that the weblog got a hell of a lot of people to want to write. That's a big deal. And composition should stop fretting about whether a weblog makes someone a better writer and start wondering why people suddenly feel the need to write so much, to connect their writings to other writings, and to enter the so-called public sphere.

Posted by Richard Long @ 06/21/2004 04:05 PM EST

But, Rice, I'm working so hard on my PHD: my Playa Hater Degree.

Posted by jenny @ 06/21/2004 01:47 PM EST

Edbauer, I wasn't disagreeing with you. I was just pointing out my own take on it. Yo, don't hate the playa.

Posted by j @ 06/21/2004 01:27 PM EST

"The thread is so way off but not for the reasons so far pointed out (don't be a know it all, Rice!).
A. It's not really meta talk so much - the blogosphere is full of blog meta talk already. This hardly comes close to the kind of meta talk you can find on any given Sunday. "

Don't be a know it all, Rice.

Nobody was saying that it's a different or more obnoxious kind of meta-talk. And the (non-academic) blogworld is also full of such self-analysis.

But it's important to recognize that OUR meta-talk (i.e., the metastuff going on in "Writing Studies") happens inside of an economy of discourse. This long thread takes up *attention* at the cost of other conversations. I'd rather see people DOING something interesting, rather than going through the stases: WHAT is it? What is its VALUE? What CAUSED it? What EFFECTS does it have? What should BE done about it?

Is analysis the only thing we can do? So, you're right. It's the same old kind of meta-talk. No arguments there. But I guess that was my point about the machinic nature of this conversation. What should we put into the ole' critique machine this week? How's about blogs? Oh yea. Blogs. Good. We haven't meta-talked blogs just yet.

My point (if i have one) is this: If what we're doing is rhetorical, where's energia? Anybody remember Aristotle?

Posted by jenny @ 06/21/2004 01:08 PM EST