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Articles Conference Reviews |
200715RivaitSession 1.5: Economics, Code Writers, and Labor Politics
Stan Harrison (University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth), Michael Pennell (University of Rhode Island), Annette Vee (University of Wisconsin at Madison) and Nathan McKenzie, Independent Consultant Stan Harrison, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth: "Allegory at the Juncture of the Urban, Technology, and Space" Harrison argued that the privatization of the Internet (in 1995) fundamentally altered the character of it; the result is that it became a “tool” of the capitalist machine. He suggested that we may have become tools as well, but that has not been sudden phenomenon: despite “Marxist myth origins,” language “traces [back to the development of]…a world economic system.” While the Internet may have “altered ways of communication,” it has exemplified the conditions of a longstanding, complex set of power structures: “all exists in commodified form.” Borrowing from De Certeau, he claimed that “we all walk a rhetorical dance” - and part of that dance requires that we “purchase identities” for ourselves. Harrison’s assertions may be troubling for composition and rhetoric scholars who have vehemently denounced considering students as consumers or as objects of any sort. However, these scholars should take comfort in that Harrison suggests we can find agency in the critical awareness that we cannot separate ourselves from our roles as actors (and those acted upon) in the world economic system; while we may not be able to radically alter the world economic system, we can attain agency by becoming reflective of and thoughtful about how we are created by - and create ourselves through rhetorical choices in - within that system. Michael Pennell, University of Rhode Island: "The Attention Economy and Local Digital Writing" Pennell started this presentation by highlighting computer and writing’s focus on figuring out how to help students become more critically aware of their use of technologies and aiding students in (his interpretation of Lanham) “producing ‘stuff’ in the age of ‘fluff’” (What I found valuable about his approach (which he outlined through an engaging explanation of a class that resulted) is that he was able to find the intersection between his students’ interest and a web community project that needed developing: the State of Rhode Island articles on Wiki Travel (http://wikitravel.org/en/Rhode_Island); His students, as natives of Rhode Island, possess an immense amount of pride for their home state and were willing to dedicate time to learning the wiki and voluntarily check to make sure that each other’s work was accurate and up to snuff. Pennell’s students also learned that the monitors of Wiki Travel take pride in preserving the accuracy of the site. Pennell fondly recalled that a student wrote on the Rhode Island article that “Russia” was the capital of Rhode Island; his class intently watched the article to see what would happen. Within seconds, that “fact” disappeared from the screen. Pennell said the experience made his students realize the importance of their work on the site; some of his students continued to be involved on the site after they completed the course requirement. His enthusiasm for his students and this project was evident, and his results were compelling enough to make me ponder what other possibilities already exist for students to promote appreciation of and participation in their local communities in a structured online environment. Annette Vee, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Nathan McKenzie, Independent Consultant: "Code Writers Writing Back: The Open Source Community Evolves to Confront Corporate Legal Challenges" Vee and McKenzie gave a very detailed look at a public legal dispute between Bob Jacobsen (a web developer of JMRI (http://jmri.sourceforge.net/),a Java-based open source community that gives code to and supports hobby model train enthusiasts) and Matt Katzer (another model train enthusiast) who owns KAMIND, Associates---a company that sells code to hobby model train enthusiasts and claims that the JMRI community infringes upon their “’329” patent on digital command control. Vee and McKenzie used Jacobsen’s archive of private correspondence with Katzer and the latter’s attorney, as well as court documents on the JMRI web site as visual aides; Vee and McKenzie underscored Jacobsen’s reluctance to malign Katzer or “KAM” industries online, although fellow JMRI users and tech news giants (such as Slashdot) had no issues with reducing the disagreement to a moral “good vs. evil” debate (and often misconstruing facts). While Vee and McKenzie did not come to any hard conclusions about the case, they opted instead to allow the case to open directions for new research: can rhetorical identification, used to solidify the differences between communities, serve to subvert capitalist power structures? Should we value transparency of writing documents (i.e., be able to see the various revisions and incarnations of such documents) over the coherence (a comprehensive overview) of them? What kind of expertise can non-experts claim when experts are absent from the conversation in a writing forum? More information about the JMRI case and Vee and McKenzie’s analysis can be found on their section of the Computers and Writing Online 2007 website: http://acadianamoo.org/cwonline2007/papers/CodeWriters/opensource_title.html
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