Assignments
All the assignments in Internet Invention have writers reason by images, which is to say use the "metonymic dimension" of images (those particular aspects of an image that trigger memories – particularly those that “sting” us in uncanny ways) to “augment and extend” their “power” – their hold on us (44). The assemblages of pictorial and verbal imagery which flow from the prompts into the genre of "mystory" record or document (without interpreting, at least not at first) the arresting information, moments or figures from each of the major institutions or discourses "on the understanding that certain qualities of orientation towards problems and solutions persist across domains." This genre of Web writing or mystory captures/strikes into stability a first simulation of the "wide site": the intersection between "the anecdotes of one's life and the aphorisms of a particular discourse or institution." This intersection, Ulmer explains at various times throughout the rhetoric, must be idiosyncratic without being “confessional.” This is a difficult distinction to grasp on the theoretical level, but Ulmer’s assignments (paraphrased and improvised on the next three links) illustrate how this is possible.
