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  • Learning and Teaching New Tricks in Technical Communication: Presentations on Single-Sourcing and Digital Literacy

    LCARS Initialization Screen from Star Trek: TNG Technical Manual for Windows 3.1

    As a member of Georgia Tech’s Brittain Fellowship in the Writing and Communication Program, I have the tremendous opportunity to participate in seminars with my peers after the day’s teaching is done.

    All Brittain Fellows are required to participate in the weekly Digital Pedagogy seminar on Wednesday evenings and those Fellows who are specifically teaching technical communication or business writing are also required to join the weekly Technical Communication seminar on Monday nights. Since I am not teaching tech comm but eager to teach it in the near future, I volunteered to join the tech comm folks on Mondays.

    At the beginning of the semester in both seminars, we brainstormed and chose topics to present on. From the list of topics, two people elected to work together to choose readings and guide the discussion. For tech comm, we picked these topics to discuss during the fall semester: Rhetorical vs. Instrumental; Career planning; the Ethos or Soul of Technical Communication; Syntactics, grammar, conventions in tech discourse; Gender and Technical Discourse; Visual literacy; Accessibility issues; Single-sourcing and user experience (UX); Digital Literacy and Social media; Workplace Ethics, Technical Discourse, and Business Culture; Service learning; Orality and Nonverbal Communication in the workplace;  and Disciplinary distinctions and conventions.

    As you might guess from my research interests in digital discourses, I volunteered to present one week on Single-sourcing and user experience (UX) and another week on Digital Literacy and Social media.

    Rachel Mahan and I presented on single-sourcing and user experience on Oct. 29, 2012. After I introduced different approaches and theoretical issues surrounding single-sourcing, Rachel shared her personal workplace experience with single-sourcing. I also shared firsthand experience from fellow Georgia Tech alums Smitha Prasadh and Andrew Pilsch (many thanks!). You can find our discussion readings and questions on TechStyle here.

    Olga Menagarishvili and I presented on Digital Literacy and Social Media on Nov. 5, 2012. I lead the group through a number of tools for analyzing social media privacy, and Olga prepared a fun active learning “jigsaw” assignment to lead the group toward a deeper discussion of “layered literacies.” You can find our readings, discussion questions, and online resources on TechStyle here.

    I am now developing my first technical communication syllabus and assignments. I have some ideas about how to approach technical communication from simultaneously practical (workplace-oriented) and imaginative (science fictional) directions. I want to guide students to be exemplary technical communicators who capably demonstrate and understand the rhetorical, critical, and ethical dimensions of what that entails. We will see when the opportunity for me to do this will present itself.

  • Trying to Come to Terms with Disney’s Acquisition of Lucasfilm and Star Wars in About 1200 Words

    Earlier today, I heard about Disney’s move to acquire Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas for $4.05 billion. At first, I was incredulous. I thought that this was an Internet hoax born of Hurricane Sandy regurgitating seawater onto a New England data server unfortunately left behind by the first responders. There is a nice press release and a photo of Lucas holding a pen above a nondescript piece of paper to prove otherwise.

    Gauging from folks’ responses on the web, Facebook, and Twitter, there seems to be a lot of confusion about this news. I certainly feel it myself. Looking at it through the cold logic of capitalism, Lucas is in the movie making business. What he might have once claimed was art or a manifestation of myth-made-modern was in fact simply a way to make lots of money. To borrow from Jay and Silent Bob, Star Wars (and Indiana Jones–a property apparently not of significant worth in the big scheme of things to Disney) was George Lucas’ “motherfucking movie check.” Lucas made it big–maybe it was part talent, part strategy, and part luck–and now, he has the opportunity to cash out. His ‘art’ was a tremendous investment that he has now leveraged to a lucrative payday. His selling the Star Wars/Lucasfilm property to Disney is an obvious choice. Disney has long partnered with Lucasfilm on part rides and merchandising. Additionally, Disney has shifted its attention toward acquisition of popular cultural properties to supplement what little remains of their own creative impetus. Disney bought Pixar, Steve Jobs’ insanely creative 3D animation studio in 2006 for $7.4 billion. Then, Disney purchased Marvel Comics for around the same price as Lucasfilm in 2009. Of course Disney would want Lucasfilm to join its portfolio of cultural holdings. As a result, a substantial amount of American culture is now owned by a single mega-corporation, Disney.

    Looking at the situation from my Star Wars fanish eyes, I am uneasy about this transaction. Despite Lucas’ attempts at destroying his legacy through the investments he made in the culturally bankrupt Star Wars prequels and the failed continuation of the Indiana Jones series in the “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” I have always identified him as being the embodiment of the Star Wars universe. Of course, he originated the idea and benevolently maintained despotic control over that idea (compared to Paramount and Star Trek–Lucas is a saint in permitting and occasionally encouraging fan films and fandom in general). I suppose it always seemed in my mind that the author/text|Lucas/Star Wars were signs signifying the same thing. They were shared significations within my mind about what ‘Star Wars’ was and represented. For example, it seems in retrospect that nearly every pre-prequels Star Wars conversation (certainly EVERY post-prequel conversation operates in this way) eventually would come back around to Lucas’ vision, intentions, mistakes, successes, etc. as it related to the narrative space and its possibilities within the imaginations of me and my friends. In a similar way to Steve Jobs and Apple, it doesn’t feel right to separate the author from the work. Certainly, I can imagine the Star Wars universe–its stories, technologies, and cultural context–without invoking the authorial ghost of Lucas. However, the authorial ghost seems ever near and inseparable from the thing (Stars Wars) itself.

    I can rationally think of how many billions of dollars George Lucas made from the Star Wars films among other things. I can rationally think about the exploited labor and anti-environmental effects of the merchandising that forms feedback cycle of the cultural consumption of ideas and things. I understand that Lucas, through his life, success, and business decisions, has enacted a real-life version of THX 1138. Despite all of these things, I cannot divorce myself from the love that I have of the Star Wars universe, its characters, its technologies (especially the Millennium Falcon–something that I imagine flying far more often than I might have any right to), and its wonder. Perhaps its this love for Star Wars that via the signification system transfers to Lucas in some weird way. He might have mucked up the possible narrative that I imagined and that my friends imagined for the Star Wars prequels, but my delight in Star Wars fills me with positive emotions that inform and shape my dichotomous respect and disdain for Lucas. While he and his vision do not define everything in my mind about Star Wars, his work and choices endowed me with an imaginative appreciation for Star Wars and a curiosity that far exceeds the bounds of “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” While I cannot give Lucas all the credit, I can safely say that Star Wars played a significant role in my being where and who I am today.

    Lucas made a significant choice today to sell Lucasfilm to Disney. Since Lucas is so interwoven into the very idea of Star Wars and its potential fulfilment in culture, I am left feeling uneasy about the transfer of his intellectual property to Disney, the cultural aggregator, shaper, and producer. If we want to think of this as one artist giving something to be reshaped and retold by another artist, then Lucas has given his property to Walt Disney’s zombie. The Disney of today is a shuffling undead shell of what it once was (and here I am not attempting to wax nostalgically as I did with Star Wars–Disney and his team of storytellers did fantastic things for culture and education through the era just before I was born–what followed after has by-and-large little to be desired). The Disney company today seeks the brains of other culture producers–Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm–on which it feeds and continues its ravenous lurching. I suppose it is this image on the edge of consciousness that disturbs me the most. I am saddened that Lucas gave up control of his property to producers and committees–a fate that I am not sure is any worse than his own revisionist impulse in the prequels. I admit that I am simply being romantic, but I believe that this romantic impulse for the bond between author and text represents something as deep perhaps as the supposed mythical qualities of the stories Lucas told us about the Skywalker clan.

    What does all of this mean for the future of Star Wars? Disney certainly didn’t wait for the ink to sign on the papers before they announced that a new Star Wars film would be released by 2015. Apparently, the acquisition included treatments that Lucas had been working on, but these will be re-developed by Disney. In a related note, I heard from today’s conference call that Disney CEO Iger said that Disney would focus on mobile gaming instead of big box/console games based on the Star Wars universe. This could have other repurcussions for the cultural impact and interactive engagement with its continuing stories. On this point, I am thinking about how these media are now interdependent and connected for conveying narrative and solidifying the cultural memory of those narratives. It would seem that Disney has hit the ground running with Star Wars, and I expect–for good or ill–a great many new things from Lucas’ universe. Unfortunately, he will not have any control over its further expansion, and I am doubtful that I will be as nearly as eager to be a participant in its expansion under the irksome visage of the Mouse.

  • My Georgia Tech ENGL 1102 Class Description and Reading List for Spring 2012, “The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age Explored Through Science Fiction”

    Martin Widmer’s “Tomb [V’]” (2007).
    [UPDATE: I volunteered to teach three sections of ENGL1101 instead of three sections of ENGL1102 when the school made the request. This gives me an opportunity to immediately revise my ENGL1101 syllabus and try new things with my students!] In Spring 2013, I will be teaching three sections of ENGL 1102 (sections: P1, E, and M). For these sections, I will guide students toward completing and exceeding the desired educational outcomes with a class structured on the them, “The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age Explored Through Science Fiction.”

    Building on the rhetorical strategies and WOVEN modalities introduced in ENGL1101, this class further develops students’ communicative and critical thinking abilities by guiding students through challenging research-based projects. The research focus of this class is on the promise and peril of the contemporary digital age. Science fiction is a uniquely suited genre for considering the digital age, because it is the only literature that is firmly situated at the intersection of science, technology, and culture. Furthermore, science fiction is a literature about the present in which it is written rather than its imagined future. With this in mind, recent science fictions comment on our present and our near future in simultaneously promising and troubling ways. Drawing on science fiction across multiple media (including novels, films, and video games) and using newly acquired tools of critical theory from cultural studies and the study of science and technology, students will develop a number of research-based projects individually and collaboratively that explore how science fiction informs and critiques the on-going digital age. All of these projects will culminate in or include a digital component (e.g., blog posts, Twitter essays, Storify curations, online videos, and Omeka archives). Also, students will learn how to use digital humanities technologies to inform their thinking and research.

    Reading List:

    Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood, Anchor, 2004, 978-0385721677

    Ready Player One, Ernest Cline, Broadway, 2012, 978-0307887443

    Neuromancer, William Gibson, Ace, 2000, 978-0441007462

    River of Gods, Ian McDonald, Pyr, 2007, 978-1591025955

    Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge, Tor, 2007, 978-0812536362

    Online reading:

    Little Brother, Cory Doctorow [available here]

    Game List:

    CYPHER: Cyberpunk Text Adventure [available here]

    I am still developing the class syllabus and assignments. When these are completed, I will post copies in a subsequent post.

  • Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: Thinking About Steve Jobs and the Marriage of the Humanities and Technology

    Steve Jobs programming with an Apple I.

    Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death. I wrote about it last year when I was still in Kent, Ohio–right after my Dad called me to tell me the sad news.

    Yesterday, I reflected on missing out on meeting and talking with Jobs–something that Scott Kurtz captured brilliantly on PvP. Growing up, I wanted to meet him–the natural element, the force of nature, the man who led his company to create “insanely great” things that enabled people to be creative in the digital age. However, I didn’t want to meet him in passing. I wanted to make or do insanely great things myself–things worthy of his admiration and interest. I suppose I’m still working on those insanely great things, and I unfortunately missed my window of opportunity to accomplish those things while Jobs was still with us. Nevertheless, his inspiration lives on and it drives me.

    Yesterday, Apple debuted a fitting tribute video to Steve Jobs’ legacy–Apple’s inheritance. To borrow Michael Stipe’s words out of context, it was “a right pretty song.” I snapped the pictures at the top and bottom of the post from that video. I decided to keep the frame of Mac OS X, because it just seemed right.

    Yesterday, I thought about something Jobs says in the video. He says, “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.” This was from Jobs’ surprise appearance to introduce the iPad 2 on March 2, 2011.

    Today, the obvious need for the humanities to be infused in our technologies is lost, I believe, on many people–particularly other technology innovators and so-called “education innovators,” who fight for STEM to the exclusion of all other ares of study. It extends also to education debates taking place right now in the United States. At the recent presidential debates, there was mention made of the need for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education, but there was no mention of the humanities. How can we produce top rate engineers without instilling them with the ability to communicate effectively, the ability to think critically, the ability to argue rhetorically, the ability to think ethically, the ability to recognize and appreciate human difference, and the ability to situate themselves and their work within historical, cultural, and social networks? STEM is obviously one half of the solution, but the humanities and all that we have to offer are the other half of creating a total solution. If we choose to ignore the interconnection and interdependence of STEM and the humanities, we will not create an “insanely great” future. Instead, we will destroy the legacy of insanely great innovators, leaders, and teachers who worked so hard to give us a present time that could lead to a brilliant future.

    Tomorrow, we will reflect on the choices that we make today. We have to seize this opportunity to work collaboratively and integratively towards that future. If we ignore this opportunity today, tomorrow we will regret our choice: “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away/Now it looks as though they’re here to stay/Oh, I believe in yesterday” (John Lennon and Paul McCartney).

    Steve Jobs looks toward the sky next to Apple’s flagship store in New York City.

     

  • My ENGL 1101 Syllabus for “Writing the Brain: Composition and Neuroscience”

    My English composition students at Georgia Tech are now well into their second major project, so I figured that I should get in gear and post my syllabus for my newly designed, WOVEN (written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal) focused ENGL 1101 syllabus. The title of my class is “Writing the Brain: Composition and Neuroscience.” Unlike the previous iteration of this class at Kent State called “The Brain and Writing,” I overhauled the whole class to only use nonfictional readings and more strongly emphasize multimodality in assignments and discussion. So far, I am very pleased with the results as demonstrated by the great work and commitment of my students. If you would like to read my syllabus, you can download it as a PDF here: ellis-jason-fall2012-1101-syllabus.