This document outlines the agenda for a class meeting, which includes an icebreaker activity, discussing meme submissions and readings, and group work analyzing quotes from several scholars. Students will work in pairs to create a PowerPoint slide explaining a key quote from one of 12 scholars and its importance. They are instructed to email their slides to the instructor by the next class, which will involve discussing the slides, a reading, and another Photoshop activity.

1. September 9, 2014

2. Today:
1)Icebreaker (one mo’ time!)
2)Meme: submission
3)The readings
4)Group work
5)If we have time– reporting back
6)Next time!

3. Icebreaker:
Going with today’s theme, please give your
name and tell us the very first thing you
remember downloading online.

4. Memes:
Your meme submissions are due tonight,
in the Niihka drop-box. You need to
include the following:
1)Your 3 meme images
2)Screencaps or links to where they are
posted online
3)Your reflective memo

5. Quick FAQs:
1)Yes, you need to upload to
Niihka
2)Yes, you need proof you
posted
3)Yes, you need a memo

6. With today’s readings (and
calling back to the Porter piece
from last week), I want to sort
of track the key ideas. Then
we’re going to do something
similar with other material.

7. “The first problem that we need to
address is technological
instrumentalism, a binary view
that separates technology from
humans, that sees them as separate
entities.”

8. WHAT?

9. Porter is telling us that it is a miscalculation
to think of technology itself as dramatically
changing how we compose and
communicate.
For example: texting. None of you text, right?
I kid, I kid. But does your phone text?

10. What I mean is that many people would say that
texting happens because of smart phones.
But no. It’s not JUST that. Texting happens
because you, as people, use your smart phones to
do it. If you chose instead to send short emails,
short emails would be the next texting.

11. Porter reminds us that the technology doesn’t
define its own use. It can try (video game
systems, for example, can prescribe that you play
with them), but without a person executing what
the technology “does,” a piece of technology is
just a thing.

12. Gunther Kress
Kress tells us:
“The approach from Social Semiotics not only draws attention
to the many kinds of meanings which are at issue in design,
but the “social” in “Social Semiotics” draws attention to the
fact that meanings always relate to specific societies and their
cultures, and to the meanings of the members of those
cultures.”

13. Like…

16. These images have
meaning… …because we know them.
They emerge from our culture and are reinforced by our culture.
Recognize this?
That isn’t this, is it? = S
Or is it?

17. Walter Benjamin
Benjamin reminds us:
“In principle a work of art has always been reproducible.
Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men.
Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by
masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third
parties in the pursuit of gain.”

19. Anne Wysocki
Wysocki reminds us:
“Because we have all grown up in densely
visually constructed environments, usually with
little overt instruction or awareness of how the
construction takes place, it is easy to think of
the visual elements of texts as simply
happening or appearing…as though… television
sitcoms were the result of a camera crew
following a typical family through their day.”

20. The Logo Redesign:
For the final submission, you should upload
a completed, colored logo with a written memo
of approximately 500 words explaining your
choices. You will also submit with this project a
shorter, 200 word or less, cover letter to the
team “selling” your new logo and mascot.

21. This remind you of your friends sitting
around?

23. And these are just normal people enjoying normal
products, right?

24. What Wysocki would ask us to do
is…
..ask why. Think about why those images are
chosen.
And maybe more importantly… why don’t
people think about it/why isn’t it sort of a big
deal to most Americans?

25. Now it’s your turn
Pair up. Yes, I mean pair up. Not groups of three or four.
A pair is two. 
On the next slide is a list of 12 people who matter to our
understanding of rhetoric. I want you to find a key quote
from their work and explain it like I have with the
readings here.
You will, as a pair, email me 2-5 PowerPoint slides about
your rhetor following the model here.

26. The 12
1. Danielle DeVoss
2. LuMing Mao
3. Lisa Nakamura
4. Keith Gilyard
5. Adam Banks
6. Judith Butler
7. James Paul Gee
8. Lev Manovich
9. Malea Powell
10. Cindy Selfe
11. Stuart Selber
12. Jean Baudrillard

27. For your slides…
You want:
1.A solid, descriptive, important quote from a work
2.An explanation of why the quote matters
3.Illustrations of it, if possible
You can Google. You should also probably use the library
index of journals to find their works. If you make no
headway in about 10 minutes, check with me.

28. For Thursday:
Read: it’s actually a “listen.” The
link is on the schedule.
In-class we will discuss, look at your slides, and work on
another Photoshop activity.