This Just In, From Dubya Dubya Two.

To get right to the point: Ms. Selfe has defined literacy as "computer skills and the ability to use computers and other technology to improve learning, productivity, and performance."

I'm lucky that definition was found on the first page of chapter one, because by the fifth page I was irritated, and by the eleventh page I had given up entirely.

Epi...Epistayta...Episteemed...Oh Hayl.

After some intense Google searching, I've managed to not only come up with a rough working definition of what "epistemic" means, but also what each of its proposed uses mean. At least, I think I do.

Before I get too wrapped up in my newfound vocabulary, let me just dive in.  There are three uses of epistemic rhetoric, which is rhetoric related to knowledge.  According to Mr. Brummett, there are three reasons to use it.  To save myself the time (and potentially, the embarrassment) of trying to tie them all together in a nice, flowy package, I'm just going to list them.  Ready? Go!

1. Methodology
Basically, knowledge-based rhetoric can be used as a brute method to show people the truths in life.  While there's plenty of gray-area here, it seems to break down to this:  On the part of the listener, the epistemic bits can help them see the bare bones facts in any argument.  On the part of the speaker, using epistemic rhetoric can work to their advantage because of the effect it can elicit.

2. Sociology
Numero dos seems to work out most of the gray-area that I mentioned before.  Since rhetoric "leads to knowledge of social questions because it creates what there is to know in the social realm," it makes it easy to explain the ability of rhetoric to stand both in the more concrete realm that the first use encompasses, as well as the more hairy topics that are shoved into our sociological stratosphere.  Not every issue is going to have an absolute truth, and by using socially founded observations, arguments can still be made effectively using rhetoric epistemically.

3. Ontology
Last but not least, we have what is by far the loftiest of rhetorical goals.  I won't lie, I had to see what exactly ontology was, and the definition that I liked was "the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being."  The general argument that Brummett was making was that nothing can truly exist without our rhetorical abilities to make it so.  


As a final thought, I'd like to remind you, dear reader, that all of these are just my interpretations, and they should never, ever, ever be considered accurate. I've done my level best, but that doesn't come with a guarantee.

Use Your Words!

We are bombarded on a constant and overwhelming basis with information.  We hear radio ads in our cars every morning.  On that same commute, we pass billboards. When we read magazines between classes we see more advertising, and when we check our Facebook during our boring classes (You know.  The ones before and after ENG 213.) we see tiny squares of text with bizarrely relevant photos that are supposed to be tailored to our tastes.  

Each of these things is demanding that we pay attention to it.  Each of the aforementioned things is an informational medium.  We deal with them on a daily basis, and I'm not too terribly certain that anybody loves any of them too dearly.  Except for those of you who're choosing to do it as a profession, in which case, more power to you.  But anyway, the point is, we know them.  We're familiar.  We get it.

We're so familiar, as it turns out, that we tend to forget about the original advertising medium:

http://www.greenberg-art.com/.Illustrations/.Humorous/qq1sgYellingAtKids.jpg

The spoken word.

Before there were delicately created ads popping up in your internet window, talking babies selling you on which brokerage firm is the most effective, and billboards the size of two-story homes along the sides of all the roads, people had to sell things and convince people organically.

Specifically used words were all that they had.  Even today, while it's generally done without any sort of consciously made decision, we use the same techniques.  No matter who it is that we're holding a conversation with, we're always trying to convince them of something.  

Whether it's a future employer 

("Look how well I'm handling this interview. I am clearly the best possible option to dish out your ice cream cones."),

 a new professor 

("It's not my fault I know the answers to all your questions.  I'm just so friggin' capable and prepared and stuff."), 

or a peer 

("I'm just as nifty and collegiate as you are, dammit!"), 

the way that we present ourselves is just a toned down way of advertising.  

It may not need a fancy, overpaid designer, but the concept is the same.

Language isn't just a medium of advertising.  It's the original, and the founder of all those that came after it.

Two Men Don't Make an Argument

Quite frankly, I think they're both wrong.  Any time you decide that you're opinion swings to the extreme of any spectrum, it seems almost inevitable that you're really just going to make yourself look silly.  And while one of our authors (Carr) thinks that excessive internet usage is going to cause this:

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/the-day-after-tomorrow.jpg

and the other (Shirky) seems to think that mastering the detailed facets of the World Wide Web is the precursor to this:

http://emergingyouth.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/led20zeppelin20stairway20to20heaven.jpg

the reality is this:

Young adults sit around with juice boxes and kittens and look at pictures of...well...kittens.  

Both authors are partially correct.  The increased use of the internet in our world today has fundamentally altered the ways in which we operate.  However, neither of them had it quite right.  While Carr took the negative approach and decided that (about halfway down the eleventybillion lines of text) it is in the "economic interest [of companies] to drive us to distraction."  Based on this, he has decided that since we are now distracted, we are useless.  Or at least, we will be.

On the other hand, Shirky has decided that since the newly formed Intertube resources have given today's youth (doomed though we may be, in Carr's world) the outlet that we need to become the truly upstanding citizens it'll take to save humanity from itself.  While each new wave of technology in the past has done nothing short of exacerbate the dirty little nooks of the world it came into (Scat porn, anybody?) this wave will be different.  This wave will give us freedom.  It'll give us a new life.  It'll change everything.

Except it won't.  They're wrong.  The incoming information we deal with on the internet is, in fact, different from anything that's happened before, it's not going to turn us into a generation of concentration-deficient robots.  Also, the accessibility of blogging sites isn't going to form a massive influx of Hemingways and Prousts.  

Instead, it's going to serve multiple moderate purposes.  It will make it easier to write for those of us who wish to do so.  It will make it easy to access information quickly, in snippets that are easily digested.  And finally, it will become a part of our lives that is so innate and reflexive that we will have adapted to these things, and they'll fall into our patterns of behavior where we need them.

The Basics of Digital Literacy...I Think.

Digital literacy is, simply put, the capability to use basic technological tools in day-to-day life.

This plays into the ability to communicate thoughts and ideas, as well as pop culture and news information effectively to as many people as possible.