My brother and I are home for our grandma’s 90th. We sit on the floor, tailbones aching, paging through dusty stacks of family albums. We trace faces through the protective gloss of picture sleeves. We smile. We laugh. But we also complain: why is it so hard to eliminate the material glare of each photo…
One of my warmest memories is a pattern: me in the passenger’s seat of my grandpa’s (Bobo’s) dusty, wood-paneled station wagon, Bobo behind the wheel, sun glinting off his square framed glasses, telling me a story (probably something comedically jarring, like that time he complimented a villager’s cat in rural Burma, mistakenly using a word…
I figured I would respond to question one, which is also connected to question three on the “blog carnival” prompt, as I intend to revisit some of the responses I have made in the past few weeks in my nineties to answer the question, “What are digital rhetorics now?” and “What, as rhetoric and writing…
I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about AI and its implications for DEI. After reading Bender et al. (2021), I have come to the conclusion that my attitude towards LMs and digital rhetorics is a fairly accurate one. The digital landscape, not unlike the “real” world, is one where access is broadly…
The other day I was watching video essays on YouTube as I far too often do and I came across a video on the channel Wisecrack called “Algorithms and the Death of Hollywood.” Within the video, Michael Burns notes a malady that has emerged within the entertainment industry and digital media. He argues, particularly of…
Han claims that digitalization derealizes the world (p. 47); as humans, we now interact less with physical objects and are more inclined to have technology solve our problems for us. I recall the physical things I used to have that I no longer feel interested in using. Growing up, I had about three hard copies…
In a post-globalization world, when the horizon of cultural mixing is rapidly expanding and we are renegotiating our understanding of values, perceptions, and habits—Byung-chul Han sees this cultural shifting through a lens of optimism and names it Hyperculture. The definition of culture is varied and anthropologists, sociologists, or literary critics explain the term from different…
This entry ponders the significance of database as an act of theory-making in two phases: database as fate and database as canon-making. The intention of this work is to extend the consideration of formation of knowledge in digital spaces as an active process influenced by the metaphysical, an interwoven academic lifemaking that penetrates into the…
Han reflects on communal disruption in the wake of and addiction to digitalization from different perspectives, one of which is the role of corporeality in the conceptualization of community. The term “digital community” has redefined the directionality of human relationships. It reinforces the paradigm shift in human values, including freedom (p. 10), possession vis-à-vis access…
The concept of smart homes as modern panopticons and surveillance mechanisms is a thought-provoking perspective that raises concerns about the privacy and security implications of connected technologies within our living spaces. Han(2022) says that Google presents the interconnected smart home of the future as an “electric orchestra” with the resident as a “conductor” (5). I…