Composition as assemblage

Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s essay was really intriguing; writing as assemblage? This is a great rethinking of what writing is, and what it is we teach in composition classrooms. If we see writing as a technology, then Bijker’s (and Johnson-Eilola/Selber’s) comments about technology as a social construct (not the product of a solitary genius) really complicates our view of composition. Composition, in this sense, is more or less a construction of patterns (i.e. language, visual elements, etc) into a cohesive whole.

The view of writing as assemblage takes into account all aspects of what it means to write, to compose. Example:

Poet H.L. Hix’s text, God Bless: A Political/Poetic Discourse, uses quotes from George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden in each poem to discuss culture, politics, etc in a strange dialogic fashion. The quotes, obviously not from his “solitary, creative genius,” were nevertheless composed in a way that is “original.” He did not use intext citations, nor did he use quotation marks. He makes it clear that the poems are constructed with the words of Bush and bin Laden, but it is often unclear whose voice is saying what in the poems (which make them all the more interesting). Thus, Hix has gone beyond being a traditional writer, he has become a composer: a designer.

From this point of view, the writer/composer must carefully understand the design and construction of each quote. This new context for the assembled elements is part of the composing process:

“We want to change the goal of writing from performance to action or effect in context. That is, we want to lend some weight to a movement that shifts the terrain of the assignment by shifting our approach to writing instruction and assessment: What if the “final” product a student produces—a text—is not concerned with original words or images on a page or screen but concerned primarily with assemblages of parts?” (J-E & S, p. 380).

This view of writing is one that allows the student to focus on composition as a whole (i.e. the design, the construction of the parts, placement of parts, etc) rather than proper citation and other things that do not necessarily affect the meaning of the text. I do think we should teach proper citation and attribution; the thing to be conscious of is to teach these rules in context. When should citation be included in a text? What form does the citation take in this context?Why do we use citations? All of these choices should have a rhetorical purpose, as should assemblage.

Another great example of the creativity, “originality”, and composition is the scrapbook: While that scrapbook craze a few years back was a bit scary, a scrapbook is a great example of a personal story using multiple modes of expression. Jessica Helfand’s new book, Scrapbooks: An American History, is not only fun to read, but a great example of the ways people express themselves through assemblage.

As Helfand articulates on the Daily Scrapbook blog:

"Highly subjective, rich in emotional meaning, the scrapbook is a unique and often quirky form of expression in which a person gathers and arranges meaningful materials to create a personal narrative."  

Isn't this what we want from our student writers? 

I would <3 a stylistics computer program

I want to own a computer program that does Corbette and Conner’s stylistic analysis on writing. That would have saved me hours and hours of time when I was working on my thesis. And if such a program exists, I think it should not cost an arm and leg. I vote open source. Though, if a stylistic analysis program was created open source would it be valued as much in the academic community as say a program created and sold? When using it for research purposes would it matter? If only I could find a linguist and a computer programmer to create such a program… I have seen some programs in the linguistics depts that seem to do what I would want them to do, but would also have cost me my house to purchase and use. And even then, I would still have to "tell/train" the computer exactly what to look for.

Though I would support I program to analyze writing for purposes other than grading and placement, I would still need a little convincing. Such programs, such as the stylistic analysis, would save me hours/days (I analyzed 92 college writing 1 diagnostic essays…. It literally took FOREVER), it still, as the articles mentioned, leaves out the subject aspect and not everything with regard to writing in objective. Even labeling nouns as concrete or not could change based on a human vs. computer. But then again, the computer could easily count nouns, pronouns, finite verbs, compound sentences, complex sentences, simple sentences, ect. It really does come down to the purpose of the program and the why and for what? Computer grading though, that scares me a bit. Mostly because it is so objective. What about seeing student improvement from paper to paper, how would a computer judge that? Would it come down to syntactic maturity? I <3 stylistics, but not in the sense to use it as a means to judge writing improvement.

I have a number of questions that deal with assessment in general. But, my first question to you is how many of you use end of the semester portfolios? I ask because, it was in the readings, and because I used them my first semester teaching, hated them, but am thinking that maybe I didn’t do it right and am considering trying it again. It sounds so warm and fuzzy, but , for me, in practice it was miserable. My students didn’t revise until the night before they were do (as they all said in their reflection papers), and that seemed to be so counter to what I heard portfolios could do. And, then, it could have just been my execution of portfolios. Thoughts on portfolios?

Writing Technology, Activism, Coalitions

After reading the Kvansy & Igwe and Banks articles for class and attending the Join the Impact rally for gay marriage on Saturday with John Oddo and Lindsay Bennett AND having a conversation with my boyfriend, I realized a number of things: (1) to have any impact as social agents we need to build coalitions among minorities (minority-to-minority) and majorities (minority-majority); (2) computer technology is an effective way to create agency and activism. Kvansy & Igwe discuss how the Black community responded to the AIDS crisis which disproportionately affects them, especially women of color. Acknowledging the role of the church in the community (and Civil Rights activism), Kvansy & Igwe show how silence operates because of sex in prisons and gay black men (especially those on the DL). They also show the community on the blog critiquing this silence. Silence, as Eve Sedgewick points out in her Epistemology of the Closet, renders LGBT individuals invisible through the construction of the “closet,” a discursive epistemological structure.

Interlude: I was so disheartened when I heard that members of the LGBT community where attacking black voters and Mormons for the passing of Proposition 8 in California, which took the right of gays and lesbians to marry away after the Supreme Court granted them that right earlier this year. This type of blaming and overt racism only serves to divide us even more—obviously because there are LGBT persons of color!! The Join the Impact rallies explicitly denounced this racism and called for conversations and peaceful organizing (I do have some reservations about the goal of the rallies and the methods, but I will save those for anyone who is interested off the blog).

The issues of AIDS and silence are sites where coalitions can be forged. AND this can be done using writing technologies online like BlackPlanet and JoinTheImpact.com. JoinTheImpact was started by two women (Willow Witte and Amy Balliet) as a grassroots website calling for rallies to protest the passing of Prop 8. They built the Website on Nov. 7 and the rallies happened nationwide on Nov. 15!! They used facebook and twitter as well as the main website, which had a blog. The use of these writing technologies and the historical conditions (the passing of Prop 8, which angered many) mobilized people across the nation and in ten other countries to hold rallies at the same time.

The discursive and rhetorical strategies that Banks celebrates in the BlackPlanet website, such as tonal semantics and sermonic tone, are great for disrupting our notions of Standard English and how we teach composition courses (as well as how African Americans use technology with/for identity practices). There is more that can be done. The Barbara Jordan / Bayard Rustin Coalition is an example of African American and LGBT coalitions. Two prominent lesbian and gay (respectively) political leaders. What would happen if we used writing technologies to mobilize against the AIDS crisis, which crosses multiple boundaries (not just Black and queer) in the same way that JoinTheImpact did?

Thomas

--boring title, i know


Douglas Thomas’s article, “Virus Writers: Subculture and the Electronic Meaning of Style” discusses the subculture of virus writers. He briefly states that subcultures themselves are tricky and not easily defined. The subculture of internet virus writers focuses on style and that allowing them to be defined as a subculture—how they write their programs helps them to find and fit into their relevant subculture. Sharing is also very important in this subculture because they believe that if one can make something better then they should. Thus, they share the codes with other programmers and work together to form an ever-changing atmosphere and are, pretty much, working together to make programs better.

Virus writers present themselves as noise, and they cause “semiotic disorder.” Virus writers are reacting to the new age of technology where technology is becoming more and more “user friendly.” This “dumbing down” of technology opens an area for the rebellious programmer/virus writer to do what they will in order to have people be aware of their technology. These virus writers also see too much dependence on technology and the viruses present a sort of protection from this dependence on the computer. There is also the sense of causing huge disruptions in large corporations, Thomas uses a few interview quotes to follow-up the idea that the virus writer just wants to cause a ruckus for the “drones” of the large corporations—like a technological anarchy of sorts (I think).

The actual connotations that arrived with the word “virus” are interesting. One immediately thinks of illnesses and deaths when faced with the word. Thomas even describes the AIDS virus as having an effect on the word of computer viruses because suddenly the word in our lexicon had such dire consequences. Thus, the viruses became the enemy to the computer user/consumer. However, Thomas explains that most of the viruses do not harm the computer in the ways that immediately comes to mind. He also examines the use of Science Fiction in the subculture of virus writers because many of them have read the same books and are aware of some of the same themes running through them; such as government control and then the independence due to a “crash” in a particular system. Thomas also explains how the subculture of virus writers sort of blurs the lines in the are of “subculture” because their culture is always changing and they are always wanting to change it. Internet virus writers “Function as a means of subcultural signification and as a strategy for the preservation of a subcultural style in an age of increasing corporation and commodification of underground computer culture” (Thomas 265).

Overall, I liked this article. I, for one, am also fearful of the sudden explosion of viruses on my computer and then my panicked phone call to my technologically savvy cousin. But, Thomas sort of describes a virus writer that I have never really thought of before. To be honest, I sort of thought these sorts of things just materialize and never really focused on the people who write them or why they do it. I totally understand the ideology within the subculture that wants to write viruses “against the system” a sort of rage against the machine idea. I like that. However, I do worry that their skills and beliefs against technology dependence will screw up my computer, but now, at least, I realize they are doing it for a just cause….

wikigroaning

The site I write for has a funny series of articles called "Wikigroaning" that compare the huge disparity of text between similar nerdy/non-nerdy subjects. Kinda gives you a clue as to the type of people editing Wikipedia articles, and what groups may be disproportionately represented. Here's the author's explanation of the premise:

The premise is quite simple. First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created. Are you looking yet? Get a good, long look. Yeah. Yeeaaah, we know, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. (We're calling it Wikigroaning for a reason.) The next step is to find your own article pair and share it with your friends, who will usually look for their own pairs and you end up spending a good hour or two in a groaning arms race. The game ends after that, usually without any clear winners... but hey, it beats doing work.

The Art of Wikigroaning
Wikigroaning II: The New Batch
Wikigroaning 3: Wikipedia Sucks and Here's the Citation

fight the powers that be

Good readings this week--mainly because they tie into my increasing dislike of Academic English (remarkably whiter than Standard English). I recently had a friend of mine make a comment to me about an impenetrable essay he was reading for a Shakespeare class (he has a degree in journalism and is currently getting a BA in lit): "This is completely classist. It's like they expect you to have 100 thousand dollars' worth of education before you can even understand what's being said." He's not exactly being oppressed in the same way that Black readers and writers are, but his situation is still a good example of how a certain self-perpetuating style can shut people out--especially if they have to write in this style. Banks' satirical comment about Standard English as the "promised land" made me laugh, because really, where does Standard English come from.

In my class I recently did an exercise about the fallacy of blackboard grammar (which is what they seem to be most comfortable with after high school); for me, the most important part was showing the students where most of the writing rules we're familiar with come from. For the most part, two elitist jerks (AKA prescriptive grammarians) from the 18th Century wrote most of our rules, primarily out of Latin envy. They viewed Latin as an immaculate language, and adapted many strange rules over from the dead language. For example, the infinitive in Latin is a single word, so of course it's a grave sin to split the infinitive in English. These rules were perpetuated by the very tiny amount of people who actually received a college education before the GI Bill, primarily to distinguish themselves from uneducated or lower-class speakers. So the very foundation of Academic English is rooted in classism and racism. We academic writers usually use the excuse of "Just following orders" when it comes to using this style, but I think it's important to also recognize its history.

The Wikipedia article was interesting to me because it actually reflected the way my students edit their papers; as Jones said, inexperienced writers overproduce microstructure edits. When I got back revised papers from students, I noticed that they almost always add material to a paper without necessarily integrating this material into the whole. So I had to tell them, "Make sure you're thinking about how your revisions affect your entire paper; just don't tack on the information that's missing." It's true that they are very hung up on the superficial aspects of their writing, and, as Jones points out, this is affecting their editing processes. I try to get them to focus on content above the tip of the iceberg stuff, but it's a tough battle.

Right now, I'm a little worried about the final project. I've only had the time to start doing my research this week; I have a general question but I'm not really sure what to do with it. I definitely want to create this project as a blog while incorporating many videos, but I need a little more grounding first. Hopefully I'll be able to get something done this weekend and over break.

Another rant

Ok, as I could not find anything to respond to, I want to talk about the Black Planet article and the blog on AIDS in the AA community. What is the most interesting to me about both sites is their use—that is, that they are being used without the use of coercion. I don’t mean that in regard to African Americans—that someone must coerce them to write or they won’t. I mean that ANYONE write without coercion is interesting. So again how people actually use the technologies without being assigned is fascinating. Apparently we all have a need to signify—to create community—to share our humanity and ideas. Again, how do we tap into this to make our writing assignments less artificial?
And when considering speaking patterns or writing patterns as “black,” what does that mean to us in writing classrooms? Is standard written English “white” or is it English? How can we capitalize on the richness of vernacular uses of language in the writing classroom?

If what we want is to help students develop strong writing—and believe this is linked to voice---how do we justify silencing their primary voices? How do we get to the places of hearing what students are saying in writing if we have to censure their language? In my experience, black students have some of the strongest voices—because they have been engaged in the kinds of social conflict that evokes strong responses. Their identity seems to be more sure, their personal history more alive, their convictions less superficial than many—dare I say most—white students’. But then I run into the conundrum: what do I do with the vernacular without destroying them as writers? And often when they strain to use Standard English, I want to encourage them to shake off that stilted voice. WE want student to show up in their writing—that is what I want most of all: writing sans the generic voice. But how can we get to it? This is not exclusive to African American writing, but how can I say this? I have a sense that my African American students have simply lived more, simply have more to say that is not licensed by “the man.” It is this rich underground voice that I covet from them. It is that place—recognized, I believe as a “standpoint” of oppression that allows them access to knowledge whites do not have—indeed cannot have because they are excluded from Black reality. Marx argued that those who are subjugated are in an advantaged position of interpretation—and consequently of answers to how to eliminate that subjugation—if critical conscious and pedagogy is what we are about, then we should encourage voices and not repress them.

Just a few tidbits about Technology and the resistence of Tyranny...

Datuk Johan Jaafar said: "This is a new influence that we need to carefully think of."

http://mt.m2day.org/2008/content/view/5378/84/

The writer of this blog, Raja Petra, was arrested and detained for 56 days (September 12, 2008 until November 7th, 2008) for blogging about police mistreatment of Muslim women in Malaysia. He wrote the blog in question in January. Another blogger, Teresa Kok, was arrested for a shorter period of time because Government officials accused her of requesting that her local Mosque not hold their services loudly. When she was brought to trial, the officials from the Mosque in question stated that no complaint was ever made.

Obviously, words are dangerous. The result:


"This is Democracy...Malaysian style..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q6558tY58E


Just some tidbits to think about.

Elliot

UNDERGROUND & STUFF

Underground Writing

Very interesting reading this week—especially as it pertained to underground writing. I have not thought much about virus writing as writing—but indeed, it is. And a type of terrorism for which I had never considered an exigency beyond a need to pull one over on everybody—a kind of geeky vandalism I assumed to be merely for getting away with it.
Now I am looking at it rhetorically, and can see it as a response to use—a complaint that more technically savvy users are becoming obsolete as common-user-friendly interfaces have developed. But I also see it as a way to create demand---for anti-bug programs, which could—and have—made a lot of money for some programmers and maybe some venture capitalists. I can also see the writing of viruses as terrorism against corporate powers—a kind of piracy in terms of time waste. While I don’t necessarily laud that type of piracy, bug writer can be considered, in some cases, modern day Robin Hoods. However, I don’t think that testing one’s programming abilities is a commendable motive to justify writing the bugs and infecting peoples’ systems. I was really surprised that the writers are an actual community of practice with their own common language and support systems—replete with journals, magazines, etc.

I found the article on Wikipedia interesting, as well, but found myself wondering if the type of macrostructure edits—which are mainly aggregative—would be limited to the type of writing produced on Wikipedia—that is expository writing—sorry to allude to the modes here, but I wonder if we would find the same dynamic in other “modes” of writing—or in writing that has purposes other than to explain. It seems that the structure of the Wikipedia technology—as well as the purpose of the writing encourages aggregative editing—which is not necessarily the same as revision. I wonder about changes in logic or structure of the pieces within the Wikipedia technology.

I also wonder if the answer to why we see fewer macrostructure edits in the U.S. schools is simply that writers are less invested; surface revision is simply easier than structural—aggregative or other---types of revision.

I do think the idea of collective intelligence is intriguing, though—and for this reason alone—to understand collaborative writing in a more nuanced and living way, wikis seem as good move in the writing classroom. I’d really like to try them next semester.

But back to underground, I am really intrigued by the article from Race, Rhetoric, and Technology—although I thought the title was odd: “Taking Black Technology Use Seriously […]”. Why wouldn’t we take it seriously? But as to the issue of underground writing—I am very interested in what is done when overt surveillance is absent—but I note that as we academics view the website, it is once again under the gaze—even now being analyzed systematically—soon to be coded and filed as what we “know” about African Americans and their use.

Writing Teacher's Tribute to Gloria Gaynor: "I Will Revise!"

One of the most salient points in Jones's (2008) article was that researchers interested in revision need to account for writers' interaction with the "structural features of their environment" (p. 283). My first foray into comp studies research involved working with revision. In fact, although it's no longer a primary interest area, I have a "revise and resubmit" article on the back burner here about revision, waiting for some time to actually deal with it. Although it's been through a ton of iterations at this point, the editorial direction I received for this current revision suggests focusing on my use of response sheets for student revision. While Jones focused on the particular environment of Wikipedia, it seems the particular classroom structure I employed may also produce expectations for certain types of responses.

Jones's article was eye-opening for me on another level as well. I've used Wikipedia in my classroom before to talk about social construction of meaning as well as reliability of sources. When I had students update entries on Wikipedia, some were upset to see their information deleted or changed-- typically because they violated Wikipedia standards of non-bias. While I'll continue to include the discussion of socially constructed meaning and source reliability in future classes when I do a Wikipedia activity, I think I'll take a cue from Jones and also talk about this as a revision process. Based on his work, it does seem crucial to address the norms conveyed by instructions to our students to "revise." There's a great article by Armstrong and Paulson (May 2008) in TETYC, which attempts to survey the varied terminology associated with revision and the potential implications of that terminology, i.e. instructors sometimes have different intentions, and typically receive different responses when they decide to refer to "peer editing" vs. "peer critique" vs. "peer response" vs. "peer evaluation." It matters what we call things…

This (obliquely perhaps) seems to bring us back around to the socio-cultural assumptions involved in naming-- a theme which I see beneath the surface in the Kvasny & Igwe and Banks articles. Kvasny & Igwe refer to what they're studying as "the African American system of communication" (p. 571). Banks writes about "African American discourse" but he notes the proliferation of terminology: African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Black English, ebonics, creole, or "a complete language that is a member of the Niger-Congo language family" (p. 69).

While Banks mentions these different names, he doesn't get into the underlying assumptions behind the names, in fact Banks seems to skate on by it... I suspect that which name you chose does indeed matter. It may matter on a personal/practical level-- i.e. you chose one which has gone out of vogue and you look insensitive or uneducated. It may matter on a social level-- which one you choose may depend on who you're talking to, and your choice may influence how that audience responds to you. It may matter on a definitional level-- thinking of Ed Schiappa's work here-- when you choose a specific name, isn't it implying what you expect it "ought to be?" This in turn invokes layers of connotations. Something to think about during acts of revision.

hodge podge of ideas

I have been trying to decide what article to post on, but all of them seemed to speak to me in one way or another. Thomas’ article had me thinking more about the division between mac’s and pc’s vis-à-vis viruses. As more and more people start to purchase mac’s, will the desire to out-code each other start a movement to create viruses? I understand wanting to challenge each other and create programs, but why can’t virus-makers make happy programs? Programs that help people and not destroy them.

Kvasny and Igwe’s article really struck me because it was very similar to what I am attempting to do with my seminar project. I found the layout of their article and the headings very helpful and encouraging since they were very similar to the headings I was thinking of using. It made me feel not so out in left field. Though I would have liked more about the methods, as Jon comments below, did they attempt to more or less create their own methods? I don’t have a direct person that I am following, instead based on what I have been reading, I have created a list of words that I am looking for and if the post has that word (or words) then I classify that into one category (and I have 4 categories). So, I see Kvasny and Igwe’s methodology very similar to mine. As in, what to look for on the blogs and comments? As I said in a comment to Jon, I found two of their articles that they cited in the methods section and will let ya’ll know if there is anything in them that makes the methods more clear. Fingers crossed!

Wikipedia has always been an interest of mine, mostly because I find myself using it more and more when I don’t know something. Our Wikipedia entry has been revised since our last class and it seems as though it was revised to fit more within the “standard Wikipedia format” (which when writing it I didn’t even know a standard format existed!). I wonder how students would benefit from seeing the revision process in work. If I asked my students to search an article and look at the revision history, would they understand the difference between macro and micro revisions better than my higher order and lower order distinction? Would being able to see the difference make the point clearer? I may try this out next semester. I like the idea of students revision Wikipedia articles, but I never thought of using it as a point of contact to teach what revision is. Pure brilliance John Jones.

The end of Banks’ article brought up some good points: the idea of not just wanting to get people dependent on the internet, but to get more farmers, blue collar workers and families online. If we got everyone online (which with Obama’s broadband wireless for everyone, may happen… though there will still be an issue of who has a computer to get onto the broadband) what would that mean for view of community? How would having all of America online change what we view as writing? Our views of writing has already changed with the internet, so by having EVERYONE on, I can see our views changing even more.

Kvansy and Igwe

I thought the article on the African-American blog community response to the ABC News report on AIDS in Black America was really interesting. Overall, I thought the article was excellent, but right now I want to talk about a few things that confused and troubled me.

One thing that I wanted to learn more about in this article was the methodology. While the authors explain that they coded the blog, they provide a confused indication of what served as their unit of analysis. They explain that they coded a number of comments, but also explained that they analyzed direct quotatoins, and threads of conversation. I'm wondering how they segmented the data into chunks, how they determined what the parameters of those chunks were. Also, the authors explain rather vaguely that "quotations were coded and analyzed according to themes that they represented" (577). How were these themes chosen/deciphered? How did the authors negotiate differences/similarities amongst the "candidate codes" that they came up with when they coded separately? What was their interrater reliability?

More importantly, it seems like the authors were expressly looking for signs of "resistance" in these blogs. They say that one of their research questions was to find if and how the "community provided an oppositional interpretation" of the ABC report (576). It seems, that if you're looking for these oppositional interpretations of the news report, you'll be likely to find and code for them. Thus, it's not a surprise that the discussion portion of the article emphasizes these signs of resistance, while perhaps understating many of the other categories that emerged from this analysis.

I'm not saying that the authors were merely finding what they were looking for. But I am saying that their description of the methodology makes this an important question to ask. One problem I see is that the authors don't indicate the percentage of comments or quotations or threads (or whatever unit of analysis they were coding) that fell under each coding category. In their discussion, they make it appear that bloggers' comments resisting ABC news were overwhlemingly present in the data: "They [the bloggers] questioned the statistics, provided explanations for why the figures overstate the proportion of HIV infections among African Americans compared to other racial/ethnic groups, and critically analyzed how science is often misued to legitimize negative portrayals of Black people....The agency to resist these ascribed identities is situated in and often in opposition to the institutional power structure of existing AIDS discourse" (588). However, the authors provide no way of knowing if these oppositional interpretations of the ABC report were the most salient feature of the blog that was analyzed. They don't compare the number of such comments to the number of comments that support and uphold the news report. For instance, how many comments gave "props" to ABC for giving the report and shining light on this issue? How many comments neither questioned nor challenged the findings of the report? There's also no way of knowing if the "resistance" category was more or less salient than the "ineffective leadership" or "Black cultural practices" or "individual behavior" categories.

Finally, let me take small issue with one potential category that the authors did not code for, but which they mention in passing. The authors notice "clear linguistic markers such as "they" and "us", ABC and BET to demarcate the outgroup and the ingroup, which serves as additional evidence of a shared group identity" (582). I realize that this was not one of the researchers primary questions, but it would have been interesting if they had coded for demarcations of an "us/them" binary. It would have been interesting to try to understand where and when these demarcations occur. And I think it's important to ask if, by making such demarcations, this blog community sustains a kind of unnecessary separation b/w black and white, us and them, BET and ABC. To me the creation of this demarcation is double-edged. On the one hand, it serves to promote a kind of shared group identity, as the authors note. On the other hand, it serves to promote a kind of Otherizing of White people, White news sources, and White culture. This is certainly understandable given the history and persistence of racism in our country; moreover, it is understandable given the real bias in the White-controlled news reports (see Teun van Dijk's Elite Discourse and Racism). Still, part of me cringes when I see us/them lingusitic markers, and I think researchers have a responsibility to expose these binaries and comment on thier potentially divisive implications.

quick diatribe

Thomas suggests that one motivation for the rise of virus production is the desire of virus writers to make PC users aware of their dependence on technology: "viruses force the end user to become aware (or, at least, more aware) of his or her blind reliance or dependence on technology. In doing so, the threat of viral infection forces him or her to take note of technology itself. The threat of viral infection forces the end user to understand how his or her computer -works, to take precautions, to be aware of how viruses spread and to protect oneself" (p. 267-8). Allow me to speak for the ignorant masses of PC users. Hey, virus writers, we are all already painfully aware of how dependent we are on our computers. We don't need goddamn viruses to make us more aware of technology. And these goddamn viruses don't force us to understand how our computers work; they force us to buy products like Norton Antivirus and McAfee--only furthering our reliance on technologies which we don't fully understand. And, by the way, we don't give a shit how our computers work; we only care THAT they work. It is not always important to understand every microfunction of a machine; it's enough to know how to make a machine useful for you in a given context. Sorry that PCs became easy to use and made your special hacker langauge passe. Sorry that you see the average PC user as an unsuspecting fool. I hope you'll forgive me for seeing the average virus writer as a selfish asshole.

Best regards,
Ignorant PC user