English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

Considering our conversation on Thursday surrounding the production of texts and the analysis of texts (and that they be imperative to keep as conjoined twins, each allowing and reflecting on the other as we navigate new production/reception technology), The Economics of Attention seemed particularly key.  I am deeply interested in the way that the author (and I am not done with the reading yet, thus refer in this post to the first chapter) notes that in an economy based on information the more you give the more you get.  Stated in those simple terms (I need simple terms sometimes [possibly too much information floating around to have the attention to decode less simplistic statements]) the way we interact with digital information is profoundly…connective.  Even as I am isolated in my apartment, hanging out with my cat, the information that I partake of and reprocess into a personalized context, then repost into the network makes me part of a complex explosion of knowing.  In Neal Stephenson’s novel Diamond Age he offers a vision of a biological super computer in which the thoughts and data of the people, the way they consume and process information, is passed (via body fluid in a grand orgy… I love novels) and accumulated into a master narrative (or attempted master narrative).  The goal of this super human computing machine is to break the code of the internet, to be able to trace the untraceable, to discover the code that would allow all information to emerge—direct lines of thought to be traced.  Like looking for cause and effect in a vast and complex ecosystem.  Lahnam reminds me that I am part of a very living and rhetorical ecosystem that is emerging, and has been in the process of emerging for thousands of years.  Technology is disallowing the boundaries placed on rhetoric, production and reception by economics (at least for those who are privileged enough to be able to partake of the technology, which leads us down an angry rant about privilege that I am not going to give into to today).  I am going to ask my 106 students to read most of this first chapter.  I am fascinated to see what they do with the metaphor of attention when combined with why the university exists, and why they are consumers of the university.  Is the university giving them the tools to not only be consumers but savvy producers and consumers within an information based society, and will it give them the framework to incorporate all of the available information into a world view that helps them (or doesn’t drive them mad).