the e-reading experience

This past weekend I found myself participating in a lively (and at times heated) discussion about the future of the book and the value of the written word on paper vs. online.  The characters nestled around the table at which the discussion ensued included a professor of medieval literature, a poet/writing teacher, a fiction writer/rare book salesperson, an aspiring writer, and a college composition teacher (myself).

The discussion began when the medieval literature professor said she was troubled by students asking if they could read ebook versions of the assigned texts in her course.  She knew her answer to the students was no, but she said she also knew she had to think more about why that was her immediate answer.  Certainly, she said, it’s important for literature students to read the specific edition she chose (because she chose it for a particular purpose), and certainly students need shared editions so when the class performs a close reading of a particular passage, they are all looking at the same text and can easily find it with the same pagination.  But she knew there was another reason she said no to ebooks and it was more about the value of reading printed texts as opposed to etexts–about the different reading experiences students would have whether they read the text in print or online.

I quickly snapped in points about the cost of books and how ebooks could cut down on students’ expenses (a good thing, I believe) and also the changing nature of our students’ reading experiences and processes.  Many of our students are now growing up reading online and reading etexts, so I tried to argue perhaps students could have valuable reading experiences reading online the same texts we first encountered in a hardbound book.

The medievalist and the poet disagreed, and the poet added that she will not submit her poems to a publication that exists only online.  She doesn’t want her poems read in an electronic version, she said.  She wants them read on paper.

And this got me thinking about Harlot, and about our readers’ reading experiences.  All of us sitting around the table agreed that online publications can contain multi-media texts that can’t be reproduced in print journals, but a few at the table insisted that the same written text printed in an online publication could not possible be read the same way as it could be on paper.  Agreeing that the reading experiences would certainly be different (as of course the reading experience depends on so many factors, not just the form in which it appears), I was a bit concerned by the undertone of a value judgment being attached to those differences.  The woman who works in the rare books department of a well-known book store added to the conversation the issue of how “valuable texts” can only be bought by those with the proper resources, and how hard it is for her to observe people buying rare books solely for the purpose of owning them, rather than for an appreciation of the text itself.

All this is to say that I’d like to participate in and hear more discussion of people’s reading experiences with publications like Harlot. What do our readers gain and lose by experiencing our submissions solely online?

Design Backlash

Consider this a dual author post. Vera posted this comic called “How A Web Design Goes Straight to Hell” on my facebook page. Hilarious and a must-read. Coincidentally, Smashing Magazine’s article posted yesterday was “How To Explain To Clients That They Are Wrong,” which, as Vera put it, “is all about rhetoric.” And, yes, it is. So, per request, I post these things for your enjoyment. (I certainly do enjoy them.)

Judging by Your Markings

I can be a rather skeptical reader — but sometimes more toward readers than authors.

The Shoemaker's Holiday by Thomas Dekker (1599)

Yup, the readers. You’re probably wondering how this works considering reading leaves no mark on a book, but sometimes these efforts are, sadly, not so invisible after all. Oh, you know who I’m talking about: those godless creatures who mark up library books! [crackle of thunder here]

I remember the first time I bought a heavily used book for a graduate class. I had taken so long to pick up the play, Thomas Dekker’s 1599 The Shoemaker’s Holiday, that all that was left was a battered copy with more lines highlighted than not. I had the hardest time with that book. I’m usually pretty good (or at least I used to be) at remembering where to find particular passages, but my reputation was seriously damaged with this episode. I could hardly recall where anything was located because I was thrown off by visual markers that, to me, meant nothing and only convoluted how I understood the play. I had no mental pictures of those pages.

It was then that I first began judging these invisible readers by how they mark up a book. After the first few pages, if a reader has highlighted what I think is fairly commonsensical, they get thumbs down, and I proceed through the rest of the book skipping any portions highlighted with that same pen. Or, if a person highlights what I would probably notice and shows herself to be fairly consistent about catching the good stuff, then I’ll come to pay more attention to the brightly yellowed portions of the book.

In recent years, I’ve been making heavy use of online booksellers to get a hold of what I need. When possible, I always buy new books, but if they are excessively expensive I’ll go for a used book and pay good attention to the descriptions booksellers give of their inventory. The only problem is many online booksellers have taken to writing almost no description of the book they’re selling. Instead they offer this kind of uselessness:

And then there are more comical instances like this:

Perhaps considerable?! I don’t know what that means — nor how my purchase benefits world literacy when I’m already quite literate, if I do say so myself — but it makes me think how cool it would be if booksellers could explain whether the markings are smart, uninformed, or some other variety. Not that I’d believe them, though. But it would be amusing.

I already own a copy of the book this last comment is on. I’m no stranger to highlighting, but I only do so when a book is particularly important to my work and when I expect to own that book for a long time to come. I’ve happily highlighted this copy because I expect it’ll remain mine, but it definitely makes me think about the lifecycle of highlighting. The next time I read this book, I’ll be more informed than the first time or the second or the third time through, so I won’t need nearly as many passages highlighted. Funny, isn’t it, how highlighting and leaving notes becomes a record of your intellectual status at the time of your reading?

These days I always highlight for a particular purpose. And it’s possible that neither I nor anyone else will ever match that exact purpose again. With time being a luxury I don’t have these days, I read for particular types of information rather than to piece together the trajectory of a book. It makes me think I’ll be (actually, I probably already am) one of those people who when asked to lend a book quickly shuffles through the pages first to see if there are any stupid comments that might ruin my credibility. Because I, too, will be judged. Alas.

marginalia_book_writing_lecture by hyperscholar (Flickr)

Visual Rhetoric Crush-of-the-Month

The website FlowingData has quite a bit in common with Harlot. Translating complex data of all varieties (money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste) into compelling graphic form, “Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all.“  At Harlot, our goal is to reveal all the various and subtle ways rhetoric penetrates our everyday through a language and location that invites everyone to explore and understand persuasion.  FlowingData, meet Harlot; Harlot, meet FlowingData.

The graphic that’s posted at the very bottom has captured my attention for a number of reasons, mostly related to Derrick Jensen (no direct relation–only in the larger Danish sense), who is perhaps my favorite author (and certainly the most sane person I have ever had the pleasure of meeting).  As a radical environmentalist, Jensen is constantly searching for new ways to communicate just how severe the situation is we are currently, collectively facing.  That’s at the macro level.  At the micro level, he’s challenged with taking statistical data that most logically reveals how the earth is being murdered and transforming it rhetorically into something that sticks.

Some data for you:

Facts, though, have a tendency to roll right off of us.  We’re more inclined to be persuaded by stories that connect with us personally, in ways that we can readily link to everyday experience.  Here’s a stellar example of the rhetorical task he encounters when trying to persuade people that our way of life, our sense of self, and relation to what allows us to live is not just unsustainable, it’s immoral and insane.*    And stupid.

“Within our current system, the life span of any particular artifact as waste is usually far longer than its life span as a useful tool.  Let’s say I go to a food court at a mall and eat a meal with a disposable fork.  Let’s say I use the fork for five minutes before one of those tines breaks (as always seems to happen) and I throw it out.  The fork goes in the garbage and is buried in the landfill.  Let’s say this particular type of plastic takes five thousand years to break down … For every minute I used the fork it spends a thousand years as waste: a ratio of one to 526 million, a number so large it’s hardly meaningful to human minds.  On a scale that’s easier to fathom, if we compressed a fork’s five thousand year existence to one year, the fork would have spent only six one-hundreths of a second as an object useful to me.”

Although he presents it rather modestly, Jensen’s shift from a ratio to a story-of-sorts is a crucial rhetorical move–one that all environmentalists and activists of all walks should take note of.  We need to keep pressing for the most effective forms for communicating the gravitas of the situation (but without falling prey to the idea that that’s all that needs to be done).

I think the artists of GOOD and Fogelson-Lubliner that collaborated to produce the brilliant illustration below have a solid grasp of what it takes to translate facts in a way that sticks.  I strongly suggest that you click the image to view it in its full glory . . .

And when you’re done there, don’t forget to check out the archive of amazing at FlowingData.

———————

* I use the term “insane” quite literally, in its strictest definition(s): senseless; an unsoundness of mind that affects one’s capacity for proper responsibility; one whose way of life and/or mental state is such that they are unable to make a sustained commitment to their own health and the relationships that constitute it.  Perhaps “madness” is more accurate, though, since there is a particular violence to our collective insanity.

Terministic Screen

Our attention is naturally directed toward certain things and not others based on our motives; it both receives and refuses information in the meaning-making process, reflecting and deflecting sensory data, as well as models for understanding that data.  Burke’s concept of terministic screens is productive for helping us understand this process.  Concentrate on the awareness tests below and see how you fare–they’re excellent examples for showing students and friends the power of this concept and how it relates to rhetorical analysis.

(Thanks to Kay Halasek for passing these along.)

sesame street meets crime scene investigation

To be honest, I haven’t watched Sesame Street in… well, many many years.  I did, however,  stumble upon these YouTube clips of Sesame Street‘s versions of popular adult crime shows: Law and Order Special Letters Unit and Rhyme Scene Investigation (RSI).  While the videos are–in keeping with SS‘s mission–educational, it’s a little ballsy to connect a children’s educational show to adult crime shows, especially to one that focuses on sexually heinous crimes.  I’m guessing SS just wanted to throw its adult audience a bone.

Law and Order: Special Letters Unit:

RSI: Rhyme Scene Investigation:

The Art of Rejection

The Wall Street Journal just published an article about colleges and their rejection letters: “Rejection: Some Colleges Do It Better Than Others.” It’s a gives an interesting report on recent discussions on CollegeConfidential.com where college-bound students have shared details about the letters they received.

by Brymo, flickr

I was struck by one example. Admissions at Boston University tried (it would appear) to soften the blow by stating they “give special attention to applicants whose families have a tradition of study at Boston University.” But as one student responded, for someone who was attempting to follow his family tradition by attending the school such a comment wasn’t comforting at all. Quite the opposite in fact.

It’s always interesting when a message can be understood so differently from how the author(s) intended (yes, I know, I should stay away from the “intentionality” quagmire), and I do wonder if the letter writers were aware of how that line could be understood. But this example also reminded me of an opposite situation, one in which excessive celebration had others hang their heads down in shame. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I do remember hearing a thank-you speech that had enough superlatives for those who had helped in the project to make others who hadn’t worked on the project fidget uncomfortably in their seats. Ouch.

But if you have a minute, you should check out a thread on CollegeConfidential.com where users are spoofing rejection letters. They made me smile :)

going public

This morning I’ve been reading some of Mike Rose’s work, especially his arguments for teaching academics to write for public audiences (something he’s notoriously good at).  Mike Rose is a Professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Information Studies and he’s well-known for his research on workplace literacy, remediation, and reconsidering our understandings of intelligence in relation to work.

In An Open Language: Selected Writing on Literacy, Learning, and Opportunity Rose points out that though rhetoric and composition as a field is “deeply connected to matters of broad public interest–literacy, teaching, undergraduate education” and we’ve been seeking connection with the public through service learning, courses in civic rhetoric, and work with workplace and community literacy projects, the field “offers little or no graduate-level training for public writing or speaking.”

Rose has been creating opportunities for graduates students in his program to learn more about and get more practice writing for public audiences (See his article with Karen McClafferty, “A Call for the Teaching of Writing in Graduate Education”).

Among the benefits of public writing, Rose says, are that “it can lead to a questioning and clarifying of assumptions,” it forces precision and “a honing of argument,” and forces you to think about what evidence is most persuasive.

I was struck by his comments, of course, because Harlot was started based on the recognition of a disconnect between academic considerations of rhetoric and persuasion and public deliberation of these matters.  Rose’s summary of the benefits of public writing also moved me.  Personally, I have struggled to write blog posts because of the kind of reflection writing for a public audience forces on me.  I agree with Rose that such reflection will only make my writing better, and I aspire to become a better blogger–and a better public writer.  Much like Rose noted above, though my dissertation research is directly concerned with public issues, I have not felt more removed from the public than I have writing my dissertation.

Check out Rose’s blog at  http://www.mikerosebooks.blogspot.com/.  The philosphy of his blog, in his words, is “a deep belief in the ability of the common person, a commitment to educational, occupational, and cultural opportunity to develop that ability, and an affirmation of public institutions and the public sphere as vehicles for nurturing and expressing that ability.”

Then & Now

The class I taught today reflected upon the statistics you’ll find below, compiled from a Mother Jones survey compiled in 2008.  The conversation was fascinating, as they felt confident to speak from their personal experience.  They readily use terms like “food movement” and “green movement,” but revealed some anxiety about the position they’re in: they feel a movement of sorts taking place, they say, but also feel individuated, isolated, and insignificant in the production of real change.  Skeptical of the tired narrative that change begins with individual, no matter how true they know it to be, they seemed equally incredulous–but in a different way–about the possibilities of collective action.  My use of the term “collective mobilization,” I suspect, came off as foreign, a bit old school (in the bad sense).  There were, of course, tinctures of intimidation in such a term, too.

Anyway, I invite you to share these numbers with others and strike up a conversation about potential avenues for change . . .

King Kugel and April Fool’s

This is a bit late, but I’m just now catching up on some blog lurking.

Rotten With Perfection displays what was the “beginning of April Fool’s:”

In 1983, Boston Univ history prof Joseph Boskin could be read and seen via a number of news outlets–the Today Show, newspapers across the country–pontificating on the little-known history of April fool’s day. The video here relays the story he told. The AP had contacted Boskin and called upon him to give them some info about the “holiday.” Boskin admitted he was no expert, but said yes (jokingly). The story of King Kugel was spun nationwide as the origin of April fool’s–that is, until Boskin used it in his classes as an example of the need to be a discerning audience. He made the whole thing up.

Of course, I say it also shows the persuasiveness of being a so-called expert on a subject. What they’re telling you might be complete bunk, but if they’re the authority on the matter, then it’s still tempting to listen to them.