Admittedly, I came to Brooke with the purpose of building out the theory/practice map for my first minor exam. I realize he is not speaking directly to the relationships among various disciplines. However, his emphasis on new media has implications for practicing information architects (IAers) and technical communicators (TCers). While his interest is clearly on teachers of Comp and Rhet, the extension to those who practice in these spaces is logical (or so I will claim). My reading below is therefore well short of a critical summary, and likely rife with misinterpretations.
In regard to my mapping effort, Brooke aligns nicely with Clark’s rhetoric of technology (the hub/spoke metaphor is working well so far). Brooke’s sandbox is hypertext – specifically the claims and arguments of the post-hypertext era. He places his call for a modern treatment of hypertext between technology (new media) and rhetoric (more accurately, his re-imagining of the five cannons). “We shape our technologies even as they shape us.” Brooke is concerned with practices of new media technologies that enable and assist – and this is precisely the point of intersection where IA and TC practices occur and overlap.
Technology as a linga franca – connections and crossings of boundaries.
Specific problem in IA and Human-computer Interaction (HCI): “… we frequently assume that our individual (or even community) experiences with various technologies can be extrapolated for all users, or that the values of those experiences are the same at every level of interaction.”
“Any rhetoric of new media should begin with an understanding that our unit of analysis must shift from textual objects to medial interfaces.” What are the implications for teaching this shift in the TC classroom? What does this shift look like at the curricular level? Brooke is calling for a disciplinary bridge – “… teachers and student of writing … are indeed uniquely positioned to contribute to discussion and debates about new media … this presumes that we reorganize the various contributions that information technologies make to rhetorical situations.”
This is where IA and TC can help! The implication for IA – and by extension TC: “… we must begin to move from text-based rhetoric, exemplified by out attachment to the printed page, to a rhetoric that can account for the dynamics of the interface.” This move Brooke calls for is based on his re-imagining – really a modern interpretation – of the five cannons: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. This re-imagining asks us to consider the practices associated with the cannons (cannons as activity, rather than static objects) against new media and the rhetorics of technology.
Invention: “… practices of invention, writing, and reading do indeed differ from those associated with print technology” – this is a critical point understanding for the IAer and TCer. These differences are realized through a broader understanding of invention not as a singular activity with a single end point, but as an ongoing activity – a continual process of rhetorical activity.
Arrangement: Brooke pulls arrangement back out of invention and delivery, recasting it as “arrangement of pattern.” This re-imagining is only possible in a context of technology-mediated production and products. Implications for IA – “The model of [online] space … is an active one when compared to the passive conception of space as container … attend to the spaces that we build through the creation of [online] presence… work ourselves free of the regularity of sequential media…”
Style: We must consider style in terms of “interfaces” rather than static texts. Implications for IA – “… new media interfaces … help us move from the abstracted single perspective of the reader of a static text of the viewer of a painting to the multiple and partial perspectives necessary for many form of new media.” The modern IAer must allow for an expanded concept of style as interface that encourages examination of the viewer/user/reader. “Just as we look at and through interfaces, we also look from a particular position … an emergent quality of a specific interaction among user, interface, and objects.”
Memory: Implications for IA – we need to understand the effects that changes in technology have on conceptions of individual memory. “…we need to think of memory not simply as storage of data, but also in terms of the construction of pattern…” This expanded notion of memory is complicated by the “persistence” of information and technologies that support and create that persistence. “…new media challenges our traditional notion of memory as storage … its ability to emulate … background processes … through new tools … aggregation…”
Delivery: Implication for IA – delivery as performance in the context of new media – more precisely the technologies that enable this performance. IAers and TCers need to understand delivery as performance if they are to fully understand the rhetorical complexities of communicating with and through new media. “Although we understand at some level the idea of performing a role or particular identity, however, the notion that discourse is performed is largely foreign, except in certain contexts…”
My reading only, with humble apologies to an accessible scholar, a wonderful teacher, a candid mentor, and all-around good guy…
1 comment:
You pass! :-D
Sounds like you found it at least a little useful, so I'm happy...
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