Chapter 1
"Ethics in Internetworked Writing
Classrooms and Communities."
Porter explains how our understanding
of ethics, particularly when applied to rhetoric and writing, are largely
derived from print-based assumptions. Discussions of ethics regarding electronic
texts, he maintains, must be considered in terms of internetworked
writing, especially in light of the problems and opportunities posed
by new media in the classroom: "As we open the borders of the writing classroom,
our formerly well-established conventions for classroom ethics are disturbed"
(3). The potential for students to distribute their work and interact with
communities outside the classroom is largely untapped, and despite institutional
concerns and restraints, Porter asserts that the benefits far outweigh
the problems. From here, he teases out the implications of "publishing"
and "distribution," concluding that technology "has narrowed the gap between
writing a document and publishing it, and it is in fact changing
the very notion of writing" (11). In his review of the literature,
Porter explains that his book is an attempt to bring together the work
of people doing work on ethics with those doing work in rhetoric, particular
because both groups have suggested much, but not directly addressed the
intersection between rhetoric and ethics as applied to electronic environments
(13-18). While offering his guiding questions
and an overview of the chapters, he clearly situates
his perspective:
My position is that
problems are best worked out in terms of a situated and kairotic rhetorical
ethics, which grants ethical authority to local practice and the conventions
of particular communities, which accounts for the specific technological
nature of the electronic medium, and which involves a discourse ethic that
is essentially pluralistic in its constitution and heuristic and rhetorical
in its methodology. (19)
To
Chapter 2
Main Page | Porter's
Previous Work | Guiding Questions | Rhetorical
Ethics | Internetworked Writing | Internetworked
Classroom | Shaping a Future Ethics
Table of Contents | Ch. 1 | Ch.
2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch.
5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7