by Annette Markham
In an era of web 2.0, networked sociality, constant connectivity, smart devices, and the internet of things (IoT), how does everyday talk shape our relationship to technology, or our relationships to each other? If the theory of social construction is really a thing, are we constructing the world we really want? Who gets to decide the shape of our future? More importantly, how does everyday talk construct, feed, or resist larger discourses?
From a discourse-centered perspective, rhetoric is not a label for politically loaded or bombastic communication practices, but rather, a consideration of how persuasion works. Reaching back to the most classic notions of rhetoric from ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, persuasion involves a mix of logical, emotional, and ethical appeals, which have no necessary connection to anything that might be sensible, desirable, or good to anyone, much less a majority. Persuasion works whether or not we pay attention. Rhetoric can be a product of deliberation or effort, but it can also function without either.
When we represent the techno-human or socio-technical relation through words, images, these representations function rhetorically. World making is inherently discursive at some level. And if making is about changing, this process inevitably involves some effort to influence how people describe, define, respond to, or interact with/in actual contexts of lived experience.
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This is part of a series of articles related to the Produsing Ethics for the digital [near] future project. This project focuses on developing conceptual frameworks as well as specific approaches for including more future-oriented or speculative elements in studies of socio-technical contexts and relations.