Computers and Writing

Chapter 13

In Chapter 13 Rice deals with cooltown and computer technology. Websites nowdays are used for personal use such as homepages. Hewlett-Pakard, a computer manufacturer, has this image where the world is connected with machines. They call this cooltown. In this environment everything would be operated through computer technology. For example a car will have a information distribution system that lets the driver know if something is wrong with the car. Marshall McLuhan’s book “Understanding Media” discusses two forms of media, hot and cool. Hot media does not require much participation to understand it’s meaning. For example when watching a film nothing is required from us. We just have to understand the movies meaning. Cool media requires a lot more participation. Rice uses the example of a telephone because you have to really participate to communicate correctly.

Technology mostly though the World Wide Web lets businesses lets have a number of products to sell differently that are all connected to the same company. This idea of marketing is called tie-ins. Tie-ins use a product to gain attention to other products and companies. For example a movie company not only makes only makes money through the movies but all products related to that movie that helps to promote it.

Chapter 14

In Chapter 14 Rice discusses cyberculture. Cyberculture is when tie-ins and digital writing affect one another. In cyberculture the World Wide Web contains material of all sorts, such as chat rooms, weblogs, and technology. The web is put together by little bits of information on computers this can be viewed as webpages. Collages help cyberpaces because it makes us participants to view it.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web by first inventing the Enquire. This was invented to help scientists know what works where already out there and interralate to their works. This lead to his creation of the World Wide Web. Rice descriped two different sites, SportsLine and Everythind2.com. SportsLine resembles a newspaper like format. Links, columns, and headline stories help present information to its audience. Everything2.com on the other hand has active participation. There are no independent works but instead everyone builds on to each other.

Chapter 13 begins with Rice associating cool with technology. Hewlett-Packard has envisioned our future as Cooltown.  Cooltown is a place where everything in life is intermingled with technology. There are two basic terms on this website relevant to our own idea of cool writing, mobility and interlinking of distinct activities.  The vision of cool from Hewlett-Packard stems form media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s work (136).  In his book Understanding Media, he divides media into hot and cool. Hot media are media with high definition that require little participation by viewers or readers in order to understand the content’s meaning (i.e. movies)(137). Cool media on the other hand is that of low definition and it requires extensive participation (i.e. talking on the phone)(137).  The concept to grasp here is that cool media requires us to see all ideas as interlinked, and the interlinking creates cool writing.

Within the example of Cooltown, we can see how easily commercialism and technology are so easily intertwined. Another example is a movie. Within a movie, countless products are marketed to a large audience. Besides the revenue potential of the movie itself and the products its marketing, other related products (books and toys) create additional revenue too. Rice also challenges us to become intelligent consumers and recognize these marketing methods and how frequently they confront us.  Another example of a tie-in is Absolut, who creates games for its visitors to play, of course the real reason they created the game was to sell more Vodka, not to entertain. Although it is not necessary for cool writing to be tied into commercialism, it is an easy way to prove that interlinking between any two topics should not prove to be any great feat.

Chapter 14 focuses on Cyberculture. In cyberculture, the medium of the web interlinks a  vast amount of material, typically unrelated yet represented through Web pages (144). Cyberculture obtains different meanings for different people. There are however four common descriptors, futuristic, building upon old forms, interconnected, and often strange and unsettling when first introduced. Cyberspace (the name of the cyberculture medium), “creates an imaginary place where its participants believe they are experiencing reality, when in fact they may or may not be doing so”(145). Rice continues on in the chapter and speaks of hypertext as the way of communication through cyberspace.

Summary of Chapter’s 13-14.

Chapter 13-Rice discusses that thus far, cool has been used to describe technological innovation, this chapter, however, Rice begins to examine how cool and corporate development merge on the internet resulting in a futuristic, Web-based writing process starting with a concept known as cooltown.

Cooltown, named by computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard, is a mythical, futuristic environment in which our lives are completely intertwined with technlogy in everything we do, wear and drive.

Cooltown derived from Marshall McLuhan’s media theories in that all media form into two kinds; hot and cool. Hot media according to McLuhan is high definition, low viewer participation in order to understand the content’s meaning, such as, magazines and films. Cool media on the other hand is low definition, high viewer participation such as using a telephone and reading comics and cartoons. The main point behind McLuhan’s media theories was to enforce that with cool media so much more participation was needed to gather other media form’s production and meaning, therefore, seeing all ideas as interlinked.

Rice brings back ‘tie-in’ philosophy, which when based on cool flourish on the Web, also strongly relate to cool and technology.

Chapter 14-Rice begins to address cyberculture. Cyberculture, is fundamentally cool in that it creates a highly participatory atmosphere. Rice gives the example of cyberspace like a collage. Collages are cutting and pasting unlike items into one “frame” to produce a new representation. We must, like collages, become active participants in the creation and proliferation in order to make sense of cyberspace media.

Tim Beners-Lee’s writing Enquire to record connections among projects and people at CERN resembles McLuhan’s work in how it links unrelated information in order to demonstrate how information connects in many ways. Rice states using Sportsline’s site, how viewing sites that have their audience interacting while gathering information, are cool websites. The coolness level depends on how much effort the audiences applies to understanding what the site says.

Chapter 13 explores the way corporate web-sites use technology to influence consumers to purchase their products. Citing Marshall McLuhan’s book Understanding Media, Rice points out two media types: hot and cool. Hot media requires little participation from the audience, while cool media requires “so much participation that they force media forms to participate in each other’s production and meaning” (137). CNN Headline News, for example, juxtaposes various news updates in weather, sports, and the stock market on the same screen. Corporations also use a marketing technique called creating tie-ins. Products that promote movies are good examples of how corporations use tie-ins to interlink two or more products. By studying how technology has influenced modern commercialism, we can incorporate these techniques in writing cool “to forge complex connections that will persuade our readers to agree with points we want to make” (141).

In chapter 14, Rice refers to cyberspace as a “collage of unfinished works that become complete only when we, the readers or viewers, determine their meanings” (145). We as readers become actively involved in the works as we try to find the associations and connections in the information presented. SportsLine, a CBS sports website, for example, contains articles from independent writers, but by posting these articles on this website, SportsLine implies they are related. On the other hand, Everything2.com illustrates how hyperlinking different texts can lead to a common idea. Everything2.com’s collaborative writing process forces the reader to become actively involved in determining the connections made through its hyperlinks. Rice also demonstrates how cool writing can be allusive, therefore again requiring the reader to make assumptions not explicitly stated. Rice reiterates because the reader is actively involved in reading process, cool writing must prompt participation.

Chapter 13: The Web

            In chapter 13, Rice addresses how cool and corporate development merge on the web to create a result that predicts a futuristic, web-based writing process. Rice talks about HP’s “Cooltown,” a utopian future in which all movement is controlled by computer technology created for the internet. It is based on mobility and associating of different activities. McLuhan breaks media down into two groups; hot and cool. Hot media requires little interaction to understand its content. Cool media requires more interaction from the viewer in order to understand it. In McLuhan’s definition, cool media is marked by low definition, requiring high participation, and interlinking with other media forms. Rice turns back to Cooltown and shows that it is based around HP’s products and that it is a promotional concept. Cooltown uses tie-ins. Tie-ins is using one product of the company to promote or draw attention to another one of their products.

Chapter 14: Cyberculture

            The image of cyberculture is marked by: futuristic, built on old forms, interconnected, and being strange, even unsettling, when first introduced. Rice shows that when surfing the internet we are actually moving through information arranged in various places and in various patterns. Cyberculture is considered cool because of its highly participatory atmosphere in which we move through this information. Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet as a way for scientists in the company he worked for to compare projects and share findings. He based his early system on a web like file sharing system. In the same way that the scientist shared different types of information, we view information on the internet in different ways. Different pages use different writing formats and writing styles. One site that Rice has us view uses nodes to link words in on page to a different page about that word, or related to it. While conventional writing discourages writers from working together, everything2.com encourages writers to work together and build off of each other. As an audience in cyberculture we should not be too quick to dismiss these new styles and approaches of writing. At the same time as writers, we must be aware of our audience and write accordingly.

Note: Due to the recent time change, this is being posted at 10:18 am and not the 11:18 that the timestamp shows. 

I chose to read some of my peer’s responses to see their views and touch on things I might have missed.  This assignment fits the chapters because they are about the changing of language, and the different techniques people use to express language and understanding.

One concept I did not really touch on was Kerouac’s rhetoric of race.  He used his spontaneous writing to connect more images, feelings and stereotypes about races.  In using his example of Leo and Mardou biracial relationship, Kerouac is at the same time denouncing his words. “At first I had doubts, because she was a Negro,”  is a very bias statement but the fact that the relationship worked proves that these words are null and void of any meaning.  An interesting story I heard about a popular black nationalist who wrote a book he titled n*gg*r, and wrote in the dedication to his mother that the next time she heard that offensive word, it will because someone is discussing his book.  He is taking ownership of the word, and changing the meaning.  Like Jennifer said, Kerouac uses the rhetoric to stir people’s emotion and I believe that Kerouac uses this rhetoric of race to not to show his bias, but to juxtaposition and change the meaning of these images and stereotypes by relating them to different ones.

http://3372.edublogs.org/2005/11/08/reading-response-4-4/
          Jessica stated that scratching is like freewriting, and it is.  She also stated that it requires that you understand how language works.  Language is many things.  It can be oral language, using a pencil, the print press, a website, or a scratch in a song.  There are not many original ideas, but since we have so many resources to create from people like dj’s can make a new idea from something old.  Every concept of language has many things incorporated in it.  Scratching incorporates technology.  Scratching proves that things don’t need to be segregated, they can be combined to make something new in harmony.

http://3372.edublogs.org/2005/11/07/chapter-11-12/

            Houston wrote something interesting that words are only sounds until we give them a meaning.  If this weren’t true than the Beat movement would have meant nothing.  Also, spontaneous writing or any kind of writing would not be revolutionary ideas.  Every word we have learned has certain feelings or backgrounds to it, which differ according to how you were raised or the culture you lived in.  Giving new meanings to words moves our world forward to new understandings.  Kerouac’s rhetoric of race and even scratching gives new meaning to old traditions of prejudice and what music “should” sound like.  The spontaneous writing invites the reader to be in the text, not just reading it.  This way someone has more freedom to decide what a word will mean to them, not what society has told them to understand.

http://3372.edublogs.org/2005/11/09/112/

In Chapter 13, Rice discusses the web and how it has affected the progression of cool. He cites the HP concept of  “cool town.” Cooltown was a promotional idea that HP came up with that had some interesting commentary on technologies future role in society. This was an exciting vision where people were all equipped with the technology they needed to make their lives easier. The idea of mobility has become very important. It has become a reality since the advent of Wireless internet and the notebook computer. HP’s cooltown idea was an indea in which technology is brought in to connect every part of daily life.

Discussion then turns to Marshall McLuhan’s book Understanding Media. In the book, McLuhan compares the difference between ”hot media” and “cool media.”  Hot media is media like a film. In this situation, very little participation is required from the viewer. The telephone is an example of cool media. The only way for this form of communication to work is participation from the reader. Comics and cartoons are cool as well because the reader actually has to full in gaps in order to gain a mental understanding of what they are seeing.

Corporations have now been able to use these ideas and link together everyday parts of life and get their products out into the open in new and exciting ways. By focusing on product placement and othe such tie-ins, companies are able to sell more product. Movies are cited as a major example of this. When a movie comes out, there is inevitably a slew of other products that come out promoting the movie. Action figures, posters, and Birthday cakes are just a few of the potential marketing devices and products that come out. McDonalds or Burger King might even take advantage of the idea and begin promoting the movie within “Happy Meals” or other ways.

Cyberculture is discussed in chapter 14. Cyberculture is the massive, seemingly unconnected enviorment that the internet has become. It is a culture where all is public and accepted. Cyberculture has the characteristincs of being:
*Futuristic
*Building upon old forms
*Interconnected
*Often strange and unsettling when first introduced(Rice,144)
Rice discusses the Novel Neuromancer and how the author makes the point that participants may feel they are experiencing reality, but in truth are just having completly computer generated and ficticious experiences. Since Cyberculture is a combination of Pop Culture, Sicence and art, it has become an amazing collage of ideas and viewpoints. This massive conglomeration of combined images and ideas provides members of cyberculture a new outlook on the “real” world. The connections made throughout the internet allow for the sharing of ideas and better connection of culture. The only requirement is participation of the user. The user has to make the choice to connect and search, read and find.

Chapter 13 was very insightful as it reverted back to the World Wide Web that we explored in Chapter 2. It explored personal web-sites and how they related to cool. It also examined how cool and corporate development merge on the Web so that they end result predicts a futuristic, web-based writing process.

Cooltown was the first example Rice used to expand on. Hewlett Packard’s hypothetical futuristic world where technology connects everyone, everywhere, in the smallest and most convenient ways. Rice says, “the idea behind Cooltown is that expansions of technology in our daily lives will prove beneficial to our overall standard of living and life enjoyment” (136). 

In comparing this idea to our writing, Rice picks out two points of the Packard Project that are relevant. Mobility and interlinking activities have “long traditions in cool.” He also uses American Graffiti and Marshall McLuhan’s  concept of cool to explain Cool town’s relevance.

McLuhan’s book, Understanding Media, separates media into hot and cool concerning the degree of participation involved. Cool media was pointed out to be “low in definition, requiring high participation and linked with other media forms” (137). The reasons for this use of cool media was then explored in again, Hewlett Packard.  It’s vision of Cooltown was proposed to be for attracting a “young customer base by appropriating  a word from popular culture and to conceptualize an interlinking society that is cool because of the detailed ways it forms connections between distinct lifestyles” (138). 

Commercialism and Technology was the next big focus of the chapter. Hewlett Packard was once again the example to show how “technology allows corporations to use cool as an electronic writing for economic means” (139). Investigating the company for these elements though, brought significance to the element of “tie-ins.” Defined as product placements; used to attract attention to other products a company sells. Interlinking items such as cd’s and books with a film was an example for this type of cool media taking place. I was intrigued with the example of Absolut.com. The site created for playing games and watching videos is the companies attempt to encourage its users to purchase more of their products.

 Finally, Rice uses this cool media demonstration to expand on cool writing. He points out that we can “use cool tie-ins in our writing to forge complex connections that will persuade out readers to agree with points we want to make” (141). 

Chapter 14 used the question of tie-ins discussed in the previous chapter, to extend into and explore the topic of Cyberculture. Rice points out that many things make up cyberculture and the only thing they have uncommon is their “propensity to merge technology with other forms of expression or with cultural items that can exist independently of new technology” (144).  By showing what Mark Dery believes comprises cyberculture, Rice reveals how cyberculture is fundamentally cool. Just as in chapter 13, it has to do with its highly participatory atmosphere.

Collage was a new element introduced in chapter 14. Just like artistic cutting and pasting, Rice makes the connection that cyberspace as collage forces us to actively participate in its “creation.”  He then uses this and McLuhans’s books to show how our writing must be “collagist” and cool.

Rice uses Tim Berner’s-Lee’s  project, similar to McLuhan’s, to elaborate on cyberspace as hypertext. Their work “interlinked unrelated information in order to demonstrate how information connects in subtle ways.” Sportsline.com and Everthing2.com were both explored concerning the cool media test and found it demonstrated in two separate ways. Sportsline being cool for its connections between various independent writers by linking to one main page, and Everything2 .com for it’s encouraged participation by building on one another’s work. Rice’s investigation reveal that a site can be cool both when it forces participation to figure out its meaning as well as, when it writes clearly about a specific point.

Both Chapters 13 and 14 provide practical applications for all the information discussed over the previous twelve chapters. Chapter 13 “The Web” says that cool can be used to describe technological innovations and future predictions and then gives the implications of how corporations use cool in the Web-based writing process. Businesses use the internet’s popularity for future economic gains.

Rice describes computer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard’s Cooltown– a mythical web-based environment where humans and machines are always connected. In cooltown, computers and technology are ubiquitous, located in nearly every nook and cranny possible– from buttons to pencils. Hewlett-Packard believes that this infiltration of technology will improve the overall quality of life, but cooltown is a symbiotic relationship. Consumers will see a device on the website that they believe will improve their own quality of living, so Hewlett-Packard sees the vision of cooltown as an outlet to sell products.

For the Hewlett-Packard website to be considered cool, Rice says there are two tenets that must be met (pg 136.) The first is the concept of mobility, which has long been linked to cool. The James Deanian rebels of the 1950s were never without a car or motorcycle; similarly, in cooltown, communication often happens on the go. The second tenet is the interlinking of distinct, often juxtaposed, ideas.

 Rice’s basis for this tenet comes from the work of media theorist Marshall McLuhan. In 1964, McLuhan wrote the book Understanding Media, which divided popular media into two categories- hot and cool. McLuhan wrote that hot media requires little interaction from users in order for content and meaning to be understood. Therefore cool media requires a lot of participation not only from an audience, but participation from all media forms in each other’s production and meaning. Individual subjects are no longer independent, but instead are interlinked (pg 137.)

Hewlett-Packard’s cooltown exemplifies how technology uses cool as an electronic writing for economic means (pg139.) Companies are now able to sell a variety of products connected to a single theme at one time. For example, the release of a movie can provide for internet and TV trailors, music downloads, keychains, t-shirts, posters and more. These “tie-ins” intertwine similar  interests for consumers, while at the same time providing economic benefits for the producer.

In Chapter 14 “Cyberculture,” Rice explains why cool writing is important on the World Wide Web. First, he defines cyberculture as items that are capable of merging technology with other forms of expression or with cultural items that can exist independently of new technology. Cyberculture tends to be futuristic, interconnected, something that builds upon old forms and can even be strange or unsettling (pg 144.)

Cyberculture can then be classified as cool media, according to McLuhan’s definition. It’s sole existence depends on bits and pieces of information connected worldwide. Therefore, web writing itself must be “cool.” Rice associates webwriting to collages, images that often stand to represent something else. Collages allow for the reader to participate by determining their meaning and purpose much in the same way digital culture and writing operates (pg146).

The hypertextual nature of the Internet allows for web authors to make connections and disassociations in both subtle and provocative ways. Several authors can agree on a single topic without having ever met each other, while others can disagree. Either way, website contributors actively participate in disseminating common ideas. Hypertext can also be juxtaposed– a thick and murky environment is created, causing the visitor to navigate through many pages before discovering any meaning. These allusive rhetorical strategies cause the reader to become even more involved in the reading and information gathering process. (pg 153)

Chapter 13 is a discussion about the World Wide Web the prevalence of the use of  ‘cool’ writing.  Media theorist Marshall McLuhan introduced the ideas of ‘cool’ and ‘hot’ media and their associated writings.

McLuhan describes ‘Hot’ media as a high definition form of communication in which, because of its self defining aspects, requires little participation by the target audience.  Movies and television are in this category because the viewer has little need to define mentally what is being viewed. Traditional books and magazines are also viewed as ‘hot’ because the reader’s participation need only look at the words in order to decipher a meaning.

‘Cool’ media, on the other hand is defined as a form of writing or viewing that is heavily dependent upon audience participation…low definition in other words.  I believe that, other than the Internet of course, a great example of this would be the live stage production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  The forms of media that Rice provides as examples are telephones, comics and cartoons.  All these types of media require the audience to fill in the gaps with their own internal commentaries to find truth in a particular meaning.

Rice uses Hewlett Packard’s idea of CoolTown, an online depiction of futuristic networking, to show the eventual evolution of ‘cool’ communication in our world.  Everything, including clothing will be subject to the vast stores of information the world has to offer.  Rice contends that we are well on the way to this eventual reality especially in the realm of media.  His example is of the incessant tie-ins of other forms in all communications.  Meaning: Coca-cola advertisements on children’s toys, t-shirts and clothing lines based off of popular reality TV shows (West Coast Choppers) and blanket companies with inter-department promotions, i.e. AOL Time Warner and its subsidiaries of CNN, Time Magazine and Sports Illustrated.  The eventual ends of this process with the digital age is, of course, complete networking…this is the principle function of CoolWorld.

Chapter 14 is entitled Cyberculture; this is in reference to the impact that technology has on the writing process, the media in general, as well as how we, the reader, interpret the literature of cyber communication.  More than anything, Rice is saying that cyberculture is, if nothing else, a complete reliance on technology in all aspects of culture and society. 

McLuhan’s theories of ‘cool’ media apply to the World Wide Web in a very explicit manner.  Cyberspace is the epitome of an electronic literary collage.  Mark Derry claims that that the vast collections of information available on the web with the inherent networking and linking of hypertexts create a total participatory experience by the audience.  The cool thing about this collage of information is its almost intentional ambiguity.  With (in many instances) anonymous authors unintentionally linking to other writers linking to other subjects and objects, sometimes within one site, the meaning becomes unclear and vague.  These holes must be interpreted and the gaps filled by the readers own mind to create a discernible pattern that makes sense.  The viewer (audience) must make an effort to participate in and create meaning out of the collage.

The main point of chapter 14 that Rice tries to make clear is that Cyberculture is a collage of  (intentional and unintentional) ambiguity in that requires the audience to decode the meaning of a text through reconstruction and personal participation.

Chapter 13 focuses on writing regarding the World Wide Web. Rice traces the history of the Web, and informs the reader on the rapid rate of expansion since it’s rise to popularity in 1992. Due to the fact that so many people are online these days, the internet has become a true cultural entity. This advancement of technology seems widely accepted in society, and could even be deemed as “cool.” Corporations have caught on to this truth, and have merged capitalism with cool, in turn creating a hip and futuristic new style of web-based writing. One example of this is the computer manufacturing company is Hewlett-Packard, with their Cooltown advertisements. This company has created a fictional place in the future where our every waking moment is intertwined with machines and technology. The idea Hewlett-Packard is trying to convey is that the integration of their products in the future will increase our standards of living, and be beneficial to our everyday lives. Rice infers that this interlinking of individual subjects to one another would be a more productive way of viewing the world. When two separate objects are intertwined as one, the end product possesses the quality of cool, and becomes a very powerful marketing tool. The connections Hewlett-Packard creates between business and lifestyle serves as an excellent way to sell a product. Rice also writes on the way that an enterprise can have several different organizations that appear as separate entities, but are actually not independent companies at all. This is also a good means of marketing, because one may not be aware of this, and feel as if there is a system of cooperation between big business. In this way, corporations can expose an audience to several different avenues who are unaware of their connection to each other. In conclusion, it appears that this act of interlinking could be both a positive and a negative factor in the capitalist market.

Chapter 14 focuses on cyberculture, and it’s effect on culture and writing. Rice delves into what exactly constitutes cyberculture. His examples center around nearly anything technological, including music, e-mail and chat rooms, and movies. Cyberspace is somewhat intangible, a new way of thinking for lack of better phrase. Certain elements come together to define this concept. Strange, interconnected, and futuristic seem to constitue this idea. Science fiction novelist William Gibson described cyberspace as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions” in his his novel Neuromancer, several years before the Web was even created. Gibson somehow predicted the effect that technology could eventually have on our lives. Cyberculture forces us to participate more than almost any media form in existance. This participation gives the Web a sense of cool, in that we must be active in its creation and proliferation. Rice goes back to the very creation of the World Wide Web, by a scientist named Tim Berners-Lee. He wrote a program that could connect scientists with each other’s work. This idea of sharing one’s progress and work brings Rice to asks his readers to consider the advantages and disadvantages of collaborative writing. How would literature be affected if we began to emphasize the writing over its author? This form of connection and interlinking is prevalent on the Web in that information and ideas are all connected by hyperlinks. Sometimes this helps for clarity, but various web sites actually use hyperlinks to muddle cpurpose and cause. These sites may seem allusive, or unclear, which could actually force a more participatory action from the reader. These sites may seem useless or pointless at first, but one must come to discover why the author has portrayed his writing in this manner. This allusiveness that some sites possess, and the participation that some sites require offer a new take on literature, and could very well be deemed as cool in the traditional sense.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13 discusses how corporate development relies on technology and how they use cool to influence their image. Business depends on making a profit and technology has become a crucial way to market their products and become apart of popular culture. Rice uses H.P.’s vision for the future, demonstrating a technical Utopia called Cooltown. Cooltown capitalizes on computer inventions that include a domino effect of products they invent through Hewlett-Packard. These inventions are to increase our standard of living making improvement that are difficult to live without. This model has two basic tenets that relate to writing: Mobiity and interlinking activities. Media therorist Marshall McLuhan concept of cool relates to our particiapation in the media. He descibes “Hot Media” as media with high definition which requires little participation to make sense of their message. He contrast hot media with “Cool Media”. Referencing cool media, the viewers are required to have a lot of participation, the ability to understand their meaning, and the interlinks that convey the intentions of the inventor.

Rice expands on commercialism and technology, and how consumers are bombarded with tie-ins and product placement. Businesses are tricky in concealing their true intentions and work together to form a beneficial relationship with their intended buyers. We have seen this with previous chapters and provided examples with our Cool Projects. The video Merchants of Cool showed how marketing works and that companies spend a huge amount of money to acomplish this projection of cool to get the most economic benefit possible. Their sole purpose is to increase the purchasing power of the consumer. We see a lot of adwares, when we got to various sites that flash across the screen as banners to grab potential clients. Large coorporations are merging together to create big dollars for our business. Major corporations are using their influence with these tie-ins, and Rice hopes that his readers will think critically about what they view.
Chapter 14
Cyberculture is interlinking everything to the World Wide Web so that the information is shared quickly and can be widely viewed around the world. Rice states that Cyberculture is fundamentally cool. It is the icon for “Cool Media”, because it is so interactive, and requires a lot of participation from the user.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of W.W.W. had a vision of interlinking scientists to prevent duplication of work and the sharing of knowledge. He revolutionized the world with his vision and inspired many other computer programmers after him.This later went to businesses and eventually to every home in America.

Rice gives us several web sites to draw connections with. He gives a few exercises so that readers can go between links and see how companies are intentionally connected by technology. He offers his readers an opportunity to view common patterns that parent companies have put togther with tie-ins. Clicking on various hyperlinks, we connect writing and ideas so quickly. When we see collages we are engaged in active participation. As viewers we have to decipher the meaning of the juxtaposition and imagery means. Finally, we see how hypertext is used. It provides information, hopefully to appeal to an audience that gets some sort of emotion, which Rice tells us is called pathos. Hopefully, the reader is pleased or informed by your hypertext. If not the discourse is allusive and lacks purpose, and clarity. Rice suggest that if text is allusive, question the writer for clarity, intentions, and who is the intended audience is. He states allusiveness is a rhetorical strategy that also requires the reader to think critically and explore outside learning opportunities. As in chapter 13, he wants his readers to become active learners and to think critically, with an open mind.

Chapter 13

The World Wide Web has experienced expansive growth creating outlets for personal expression, popular culture and ways for businesses to develop economic plans based on this technological explosion. Hewlett-Packard has done this through its conception of Cooltown where a future is envisioned as a wireless and wired world where human lives are connected with machines, with information technology, making life easier through constant connections to the Internet world.

In Cooltown, mobility is controlled by computer technology made possible through the constant technological developments that make computer chips smaller every year. Smaller computers would be put to work in unusual places such as t-shirts, buttons or other unexpected places. (This reminds me of a news story I heard the other day. There is a new breast implant that is being designed that can play music. Unusual use of technology to say the least! Click the link above to read more about this innovation. I had to read more about it because I had all sorts of questions – where do you plug in your headphones? Do they come with built-in speakers? How do you download music?) The Cooltown concept is to show how technology can be beneficial and improve the standard of living.

The Cooltown model offers a useful conception of cool writing according to Rice. The model takes into account the assumption that everyone would have access to this fantasy place of a technology driven life. But more importantly, the more relevant features of Cooltown that apply to cool writing are mobility and the interlinking of activities. These ideas have a cool background in that representations of cool in the 50’s involved the important role of the automobile in teenager’s lives. Rice uses the example of the movie American Graffiti that was set in the 50’s/60’s and depicts various scenes that are focused around the presence of automobiles. HP takes this movie metaphor and uses it in Cooltown as a metaphor of mobility.

HP sees for Cooltown an interlinking system that can be drawn from media theorist Marshall McLuhan and his book Understanding Media. McLuhan saw media as being either hot or cool, based on the definition of the medium used and the participation required by the audience to make sense of this definition. His interest was primarily based on the degree of participation required by the audience and this definition was developed in the early 1960’s. There have been numerous changes in media technology since then, so his theory doesn’t hold up well. But, Rice claims that McLuhan’s definition can be generalized and still used to view media in a different way than what we are accustomed to.

Hot media, according to McLuhan, requires little participation by the audience in order to understand the content. Examples of hot media are print and film. The participation required for this media involves the audience to use mainly their eyes to view the film or read the text.

Cool media requires extensive audience participation, such as the telephone where one person must speak into the receiver to be heard, and the other person must listen. It requires two people to participate. Cool media also involves interlinking ideas such as writing about a school subject. A student participating in this activity links the subject (example biology) with writing. Rice also mentions using the computer for writing as a cool media form and he also cites the example of CNN news. On CNN, juxtaposition is used to show sports updates, breaking news, weather information etc., while a reporter is simultaneously reporting on another subject. McLuhan’s definition of cool media involves media that is low definition, requires high participation by the audience and interlinks with other media forms.

McLuhan’s definitions of media and cool are relevant in electronic writing in that technology makes possible the interlinking of various activities. For example, English writing classes take place in computer classrooms; people can gain knowledge and information quickly on wars and other topics in foreign nations. Ideas can be juxtaposed such as the CNN Headline News example.

McLuhan’s cool media definition also creates a commercial angle for media that HP uses to portray Cooltown. Cooltown is based on the products that HP sells – computer and computer technology. Cooltown is another way for HP to sell their products by attracting young customers by using the term “cool” and by showing an interlinking society that is connected through businesses and lifestyles. In HP’s Cooltown, people will be cool because they use technology in all aspects of their lives.

Rice then takes the discussion more into commercialism and technology and the marketing technique of tie-ins. Tie-ins use one product to gain attention to other products a company sells. He uses the example of movies, specifically Harry Potter. The film itself is just part of the business. Other commercial aspects of the film involve products such as Harry Potter glasses, capes, costumes, dolls, etc. Other examples of tie-ins could be a feature story in a major newspaper about the movie or even about a new product. The story may actually be a paid advertisement. To become intelligent consumers and not just passive recipients of consumer culture, we need to be aware of the existence of tie-ins.

AOL Time Warner is a prime example of a business that utilizes tie-ins. AOL Time Warner owns CNN, People Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Time Magazine and Netscape. CNN sometimes features stories that have sub-headings for People Magazine, People’s website features a Netscape navigation bar, ads for Time Magazine and Sport Illustrated can be found on CNN’s website. If you did not know that all of these entities were owned by the same company, you would think these organizations were participating in corporate cooperation, or maybe even actually purchasing advertising. This is misleading to the consumer. Reality is AOL Time Warner is using all of its holdings/products to link to other holdings/products in order to establish a common customer base and to promote these products simultaneously.

Another example of a company using tie-ins is Yahoo.com. Using internet tie-ins, Yahoo.com in 2002 listed winners of the Grammy awards and offered a link to their companion site Launch. Short clips of these artists were available and the artist’s CD could be purchased from this site. Rice asks us to pay attention to these links and take note of whether or not these sites are related commercially.

Rice goes on to mention other uses of tie-ins such as PBS’ website that has a “shop” link and tie-ins to various PBS shows. Absolut.com uses flash technology to offer games, allow the user to make their own films and to view the company’s videos, inviting participation by the consumer (McLuhan’s definition of cool media) in order to entice visitors to purchase Absolut Vodka.

Cool writing in these examples is used as an economic activity. Rice says that this activity can be considered relevant to our cool writing as students and can be used as a way to make complex connections to persuade our reader to agree with our viewpoints in our writing.

Chapter 14

Rice discusses cyberculture and how this term has different meanings to different people, just as the term cool does. The World Wide Web links vast amounts of material related and unrelated through web pages, weblogs, chat rooms, games, file sharing, video and animation. The various mediums used in cyberculture have in common the ability to combine technology with other forms of expression that can exist outside of technology. The image of cyberculture can be seen as being strange at first, futuristic, building upon older forms of media and interconnected.

Science fiction author William Gibson defined cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators…..a graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system.” What is interesting is the fact he wrote this in his 1984 novel Neuromancer eight years before the web was created by Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee got the idea for the web when he worked at CERN. At this organization he saw scientists working independently and as a result, projects were often duplicated. Many times these scientists and their projects could have benefited from other projects, but the knowledge of these other works was not shared. Berners-Lee’s first effort at creating the World Wide Web was the program Enquire. This program would record connections between projects and people at CERN. His vision was to create a way to link all information contained on all computers. His project modeled McLuhan’s work in that unrelated information can be linked in unique, subtle and provocative ways.

Rice continues his discussion of linking information by referencing the website, www.sportsline.com. At this site various writings on sports related issues are posted in a newspaper type format using a pull-down menu for navigation. This site appears to be a single entity authorial site, but in fact numerous individual writers who more than likely work independently and in isolation from each other create it. The site connects these authors and writings together by linking to each other or back to the home page.

Another site Rice refers us to is www.everything2.com. This site links various nodes to different writings with a common word. For example, the word “people” could link to a poem, to lyrics, or to another composition that mentions the word people. However, these compositions would more than likely be created by different people in different contexts, but yet would convey a common idea. This site requires participation from the contributors. This style is known as cooling and has been referred to before by Rice in the beginning of Writing About Cool.

Hypertext can involve various levels of participation by the reader. Some websites involve the process of mainly reading. Other sites invite the visitor to participate more actively by clicking on various links. However, some sites require more provocative participation by offering dense interlinking, juxtapositions and imagery that the visitor must navigate through in order to gain meaning from the site. Examples of this type of site are www.jodi.org,
www.Rhizome.org and www.trashconnection.com. These sites can make the visitor feel uncomfortable, frustrated or confused, creating a contemporary version of pathos. These sites consider discourse as allusive and the meanings are up to the visitor. These sites are considered ambiguous cool writing and can be compared to the writings of William Burroughs. They promote a new type of cool rhetoric and require a different, more involved participation from the audience in that it is up to the visitor to decipher meaning from the site.

Chapter 11 of Writing about Cool is called The Beats.  This chapter follows two of the pioneers that helped to establish this literary movement.  These guys called themselves ‘the beats’ because they felt ‘beat-down’ yet at the same time holy.  It is funny to me that Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs found enlightenment in their despair.   Rice describes these men as “mostly educated, white and male.”  ‘The Beats’ found themselves disenfranchised with the culture of the sixties and found that their enlightenment would help other like minded individuals who dealt with alienation, marginality, dissatisfaction with the status quo and a sense of rebellion.  Both of these men were very influential in their ‘experimental writings.
Chapter 11 delves into the stylistics of Jack Kerouac whose writings can best be described as interactive.  I say this because, the aspects and concepts of spontaneous writing, rhetoric of race, nostalgia, cut-up, juxtaposition and the use of tape recording conversations only find their meanings in the minds of the reader. 
Spontaneous writing is a perfect example.  ‘The Subteraneans’ is rife with Kerouac’s style of spontaneity, meaning that the style is quick and seemingly directionless that still comes together in spite of itself.  This writing style makes the reader, as Rice puts it, “feel privileged” to the inner workings and machinations of the authors mind.  This type of spontaneous prose is good for commenting on immediate feelings and to give the reader a sense of urgency.  The lack of direction draws the reader in and makes them question intent and make up their own minds as to the answers of the questions that the author helps create.  Spontaneous writing is a good tool in letting the reader help create their own unique perspective into the author’s intent.
The rhetoric of race is important not just for racial reasons.  The use of Race is just an example; however, it does give the reader a glimpse into the racial tensions of the sixties; meaning, that this same scenario can work well with anything from religion to the morality of abortion.  Kerouac’s word usage gives the reader a choice.  He uses offensive language, both racial and misogynistic to let us decide how to react to cultural issues that exist.  We can either be offended, pleased or unaffected…the truth is that it doesn’t matter because our reactions to Kerouac’s rhetoric will give each of us our own insight into the cultural issues at hand, after all…words are just sounds until our minds give them a meaning.
Nostalgia is another of Kerouac’s strategies in his literary arsenal of rhetoric.  Nostalgia is, of course, a desire for the past.  Rice defines it as the ‘longing’ for an idealized past era.  This is an important tool because for many people the times of childhood innocence are exactly that; an idealized past.  Rice states, however, that nostalgia is in a cyclical twenty year pattern; meaning that what the ideal era is today would be the 1980’s.  This rhetorical wrench helps to persuade and emotionally invest the reader…remind them that the toils and entrapments of today didn’t used to exist. It is another form of an internal social commentary, just like spontaneous prose and racial rhetoric described earlier.  This tool makes the reader respond to the idealized ‘better times.’
The ‘Cut-Up’ is a method that Burroughs proposed to help people counter the messages in the media establishment.  This proposal allows the reader to cut apart a message and put it back in a non-sequential order in an effort to reinterpret a given message.  As an author, this tool is invaluable to the writing process.  Especially when considering the computer age where most writing is done with a word processor.  ‘Cut-up’ is a necessary part of the writing process. 
I have to admit; when I first read the piece on the Subliminal Kid’s experiments with the tape recorder I was harsh in my belief that it was plagiarism of ideology.  Yet, upon more conscious thought, this experiment does in fact seem exceptionally relevant as a research and interpretive tool that can be invaluable in the more linear forms of writing. Or taken by themselves, a very provocative art form that can really engage not only the artist, but the audience in an interior dialogue of societal issues.
Skratching, the noble art of hip-hop. What was originally considered an art  conceived by need has morphed into mainstream popular culture.  An interesting transformation with a relatively un-evolved means.  DJ’s still use old records and old technology to create new sounds and new beats.    The debate is literacy and technology.  Rice uses the example of sheet music juxtaposed next to writing down cuts and breaks to dictate a language to help immortalize original thought. 
The main issue at bay with this ‘skratching’ language is the creation of a new literacy movement.  As with any art, a way of creating immortality and the desire to create a standard of re-creation is needed.  Music is no exception.  Sheet music is a language in and of itself.  Words on a page are synonymous to the flag markings of b flat and c sharp.  Just as the contrasts of colors on a piece of fabric create a ‘readable’ painting, the ideas behind words and the sounds behind notes are representative of a readable language.  So the evolution of ‘skratching’ is tantamount to the evolution and rhetoric of any form of creative literacy.  Because of ‘Skratching’s’ relative youth, one can view the nature of the consumption within all ‘literature’ as an interpretive process relying on each reader’s responses

Jack and Kerouac and William S. Burroughs were beat writers. They did not stay with the status quo when it came to writing. Their literature dealt with alienation, marginality, and rebellion. “They often tried to replicate in their own writnigs the ways in which technolgy functions.” Spontaneous writing has run on sentences and jumps from one subject to another. The writing can be taked in many different ways because ideas are not totally explained. Kerouac’s spontaneous writing was planned and edited. He did not really write spontaneously. Kerouac’s rhetoric of race wasa little disturbing. His comments were very stereotypical and not facts. He may have only know Black and Mexican hustlers and that was all he could comment on. Kerouac’s nostalgia was the past as a form of critique. Nostalgia depends on the past. William S. Burroughs works included cut-up, juxtaposition, and tape recording experiments.
Cut up is taking a finished writing and cutting it up to make a new massage. Today we use cut up in Word documents to cut and paste within the text. Juxtapostion is similar to cut up but it has images also. The image and text are not natural together. The image and text gives a new meaning or message to it readers.
Turntablists skratch records and make new sounds. They can be considered skratch literate and are making a new form of music. “By cutting associations, engaging in critique, and producing alternative viewpoints, skratching shapes its own literate practice.”

In chapter 11, Rice discusses “the beats”; white, male, educated writers who started a new movement in American literature rethinking relationships to American culture. Although there were several writers, Rice only talks about two, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs and how they rhetorically created alternative forms of expression on views such as the relationships to state, educational, and cultural control.

Spontaneous writing as Kerouac called it, is the writing of whatever came to mind as quickly as possible. The image of this writing style is actually more important than spontaneously writing. Influencing this style was the fact that through the 50’s and 60’s technology was developing at a very rapid speed. Nostalgic writing is effective with creative a sense of longing in its audience. Through television, nostalgia can give the audience a sense of, with a Nike commerical, that wearing their product can make you feel and look like a certain sports player. Nostalgia also arose in popular television shows like Happy Days.

“The cut-up involves taking a piece of writing, cutting it into at least four sections, then rearranging the sections in new ways.” Doing so allows for different perspectives on previous works revealing new ideas and even counteracting the original meaning and purpose of a text. While Burroughs used this technique as a means to critique, technology has now taken this for granted, using ‘cut and paste’ technology to take unrelated images and putting them into an SUV commercia,l for example making the commercial a more powerful and more persuasive one.

Juxtaposition is the use of putting items togheter, sometimes items that have nothing to do with one another. Burroughs uses juxtapositon to defamiliarize images, languages, relationships and roles we normally take for granted. The use of juxtaposition as Burrough mentioned in The Subliminal Kid where the kid remixes recordings and plays them in order to present different arguments, can also and is used for cool writing, as is nostalgia and spontaneous writing to make new and more powerful persuasive arguements.

Chapter 12 Rice discusses how literacy through the development of technology has advanced. In the 1500’s not many people could read or write, but as technology advanced so did education and literacy. As literacy advances so does techonology. Skratching records a.k.a ’skratchadelia’ is a means of skratching records producing a rhythm. Rice states that, “[l]ike sampling, skratching integrates the technology itself into the process.” Skratching puts together the tools of technology into the writing process. Skratching is an example of the cut and paste act, producing something new, therefore, is important to cool writing in how it creates its own literate practice through the development of computer technology.

Chapter 11 opens and trains its focus on the 2 very particular members of “The Beats;” Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. After World War 2, this “group of Disenfranchised young writers” got together to “rethink their relationship with to American culture, to media and technology, and self-expression.” These two writers in particular created some very strong new ideas of expression. During this time, the civil rights movement was a very big deal with people often coming very heated over the subject. Kerouac chose this time to write a book exploring a relationship between a white male an a black woman. Throughout the story, those themes of racism became very prevalent. While having a strong civil rights, the book is also has a very modern style, often jumping from one sentence to another in a very stream of consciousness style. Kerouac uses a strong sense nostalgia throughout his works as well. While using these past events as happy memories, they are also usually social critiques.

“Burroughs’s work addresses the influence of media and government on culture.” Burroughs created the “Cut-up” to reveal other possible meanings within texts. The idea is to take words or parts of a writing and then mix it up, and recombine it to make something completely different.  Since we don’t think about how are lives are affected by writing, the idea of the “Cut-up” helps us examine the structure of a piece of writing. Through this analysis, we are often times forced to look at things that we would not normally associate with each other, giving a completely new perspective on it. Burroughs also presents the idea of a tape recording experiment, which is a way to get an idea of the views and the environment of a moment in time.

Scratching forms an interesting view of modern technology mixing with old to make a new kind of entertainment. It takes an older technology (The record, and player) and is used in a new form. a form that could be considered similar to The works of the Beats we discussed before. It is a stream of consciousness changing of music from moment to moment. It provides a totally new form of entertainment pulled and remixed right from the old technology.

            After the last world war and seeing probably some of the worst parts of humanity, some individuals began a search for answers and philosophies which began the “Beat” movement.  This movement confronted the society torn by war and its issues of human condition.  Along with this movement, the 50s and 60s had great advances in technology like planes, broad- spanned communications (more telephones) even new weapons that did not require so much hand to hand combat.  Also, the beginning of the computer.  Gaps were being closed and the bridges between ideas and information were shorter. 

Communication became faster allowing for more ideas in which Jack Kerouac’s style of spontaneous writing is exemplified.  People had to accept all the new changes to update with the world.  Kerouac’s writing invites people to accept a different style of writing that is not subjected to rules and standards of typical grammar and composition.  He splices many different thoughts which suggests that everything, however different, is interrelated and fits together in spite of order.  This again closes gaps between ideas. 

One major gap in ideas is race.  Culture teaches prejudice against races which creates gaps and alienation.  We associate certain traits and stereotypes to different people; they are the “other”.  Also, we associate or compare to past times or events, and sometimes have nostalgia or a longing for that again.  Nostalgia sometimes does not allow for interrelation to the present, and we don’t see the evolution of times which makes another gap, ex. Then and Now versus now And then.  We all associate different things with race and times like the afros and victories of the 1970s NBA players, or the use of a dictionary and a pencil vs. our ability to use a Word or spell-check. 

Culture influences our views of these subjects, but we are also influenced by media and government.  William Burrough suggests that this influence can be rearranged but using the “cut up”.  By rearranging the language that media or government communicates we change the gap and the old subject becomes something we may be able to connect to better or substitute to create something new like using tags or links in hypertext.  Using juxtaposition also closes the gap between opposites that usually don’t connect.  It takes it out of order like the spontaneous writing.  Hip Hop uses many different techniques and communications to connect many aspects to create one sound or song.  DJ’s scratch sound, which makes a new sound that, is still connected to the old.  Communication is important for literacy, which is the understanding of any given topic.  Using these different techniques opens us for literacy.  

Everything can be changed or viewed differently and these techniques that give us more ability to do so.  Using the resources and language, even the stuff you may overhear in a restaurant, helps us find more connection and relations between basically anything.  Through this, we find more answers and communication which closes gaps between humanity. 

Chapter 11

Feeling constraints from traditional forms of expression in writing, the Beats, a group of writers in the early 50s, created an innovative form of writing rhetoric due to the advancements in technology.  In chapter 11, Rice explains the different concepts beat writers used to illustrate how we can incorporate these techniques into writing cool on the web.  Rice uses examples from Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs novels to illustrate different styles of writing.  In The Subterraneans, Kerouac uses a nonlinear spontaneous writing technique.  Relying on the audience’s cultural awareness and knowledge, spontaneous writing links shifting ideas together, therefore allowing the reader to make new and different associations between the words, phrases, or ideas they represent.  Furthermore, Rice uses Kerouac’s rhetoric of race to illustrate how language can shape attitudes and stir reader’s emotions (110).  Nostalgic writing, also used by Kerouac, focuses on mundane and unimportant details from the past to recreate an “idealized past.”  Popular television shows, such as Happy Days and That 70s Show, illustrate how effective nostalgia can be.  Next Rice discusses Burroughs’ cut-up strategy which involves cutting up and rearranging the words of original writings to create a new message.  The cut and paste functions on the computer, for example, allow the writer to quickly cut, paste and rearrange writing to create a different meaning.  Juxtaposition, placing unrelated items together, is a form of the cut-up strategy.  In Burroughs’ Nova Express, The Subliminal Kid records sounds and conversations of people, he then remixes or juxtaposes these sounds to construct new arguments.  According to Rice, these styles can improve cool writing because all of these techniques involve using associations with previous knowledge to create convincing arguments. 

Chapter 12

Advancements in technology have influenced literacy.  The printing press expanded literacy in the aspect that more people could read and write, but the computer affected literacy by reshaping the use of language electronically to be persuasive.  Computers created a new form of expression called electronic writing.  In chapter 12, Rice explains how skratching, a form of electronic writing in Hip-Hop music, shapes its own literate practices.  First, skratching involves cutting associations by isolating parts of different recordings and using them in an alterative way.  Disassociating from original music’s intention creates an alternative view point and also a critique.  The importance of skratching in relation to cool writing is, as Rice points out, it created its own literate practice through innovations in computer technology (131).  Like skratching, cool writers must also “cut assumptions.”

Chapter Eleven’s “The Beats”, is a very interesting topic to bring into Writing About Cool and Rice had very pertinent and interesting points to make drawing from both Keroac and Burroughs contributions. There were a few ideas, however, that stood out significantly.

One of these was spontanous writing. Found in Kerouac’s, The Subterraneans, this method of writing occurs when the sentences run into eachother and the ideas switch without much transition. Rice determines that, “it gives the assumption that he wrote whatever came to his mind as quickly as possible and that the image of this type of writing may be more imortant that actually doing it”. According to the text, for the “Beats”, this style of writing reflected the speed at which technology was developing at the time.

Kerouac’s rhetoric of race was another notable topic in chapter eleven. Picked up in Kerouac’s indirect method of describing Leo and Mardou’s inter-racial relationship (The Subterraneans), Rice claims, “it provokes comments on race in complex ways”. Rice also believes “Kerouac’s rhetoric of race can be directly related to popular perceptions of racial identity. The types of words and cultural ideas he uses stimulates emotions”.

Nostaligia was another element Rice drew from and compared to modern technology. Picked up in Kerouac’s novel, Visions of Gerard, it treats nostalgia as a tool for organizing the narrative. Rice describes nostalgia as the activity of longing and believes it replaces the present with an idealized past. On page 110, Rice relates this to the Kerouac’s day in time by comparing it with the nostalgia of technology. Kerouac isolates various cultural markers from specific temporal moments that will encourage emotional response.

On page 112, Rice addresses Burrough’s invention of the “cut-up”. Rice’s definition says the cut-up “involves taking a piece of writing, cutting it into sections and rearranging the sections into new ways. Rice then links cut-ups to revealing unspoken ideas tht sometimes act as resistance to the text’s original meaning. He says the idea behind it is experimenting with language to produce alternative positions through association.

Bringing the cut-up into the comparison brought new perspective on the cut-up of today’s technology but in considering it, we also had to consider the element of juxtaposition. This was the next major point of the chapter. The book defined it as “placing items together, often including items that have little of nothing to do with one another”. Rice relates this to ‘cool’ writing by referring to Burrough’s practice of placing unlike text with unlike images. He then demonstrated its effects.

The last major topic of the chapter centered around the tape recording experiments. These are a reference taken from Burrough’s book, The Subliminal Kid. They are his example of juxtaposition. The kid remixes recordings of bars and cafes and ends up with what Rice calls, “a disorienting yet persuasive construction of new arguments about contemporary issues.”

Overall, chapter eleven was very effective at explaining Kerouac’s and Burroughs alternative forms of expresssion, as well as how these forms of expression reflected the function of technology at the time.

Chapter 12 was centered more on technology but particularly on the topic of “Skratching”. Skratching itself (on page 127) is defined as “the extension of a record’s rythms and beat by carefully moving the record back and forth and spinning it in short bursts. This idea came into play as we a looked at how to apply “technogically oriented commmunicating systems”. Rice states that “skratching has played a major role in rethinking how technology shapes expression and proposes that writing can take place in alternative venues”.

Rice eloquently paralleled skratching music with skratching our writing to create our own literary practice. It can be done with alphabets, words, language and ideas. He encourages us to cut off our past associations and typical assumptions in writing. Cuttting up the ideas ofour papers, projects and designs in the classroom is a practical way of applying this “cool” idea.

Chapter 11 focuses on “The Beats,” a group of writers in New York City after World War II.  Rice narrows it down to two of the writers, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs because they each introduced new approaches to the construction of discourse.  The focus begins with Kerouac and the introduction of spontaneous writing, where the sentences run into one another & ideas quickly change without much transition (107).  This style is evident in his work, The Subterraneans.  The idea was that Kerouac wrote whatever popped into his mind as quickly as he could.  Spontaneous writing is a misnomer; the construction is deliberate with careful editing.  The image portrayed through the writing becomes more important than reality, which serves as a recurring theme that Rice uses.  The narration in The Subterraneans is constantly shifting, resembling that of the thought process.  Kerouac’s usage of digression and asides assists the audience in the movement of subjects and is informative and revealing to the reader (107).  The movements are dependent upon the audience’s cultural awareness.  The assumption is made that the audience has some knowledge of the subject matter so that the seemingly unrelated matter is chained together to create a powerful image. 

The next major point that Rice points out about Kerouac is his rhetoric of race.  He is using his personal beliefs to write about the issue of racism.  The rhetoric is composed of the word and cultural ideas he uses to stir readers’ emotions (110).  The other tool that Kerouac uses is nostalgia, as a means of organizing his narrative, where he replaces the present with an idealized past (110).  Rice describes it best when he states “the memory process itself creates a nostalgic experience; we tend to recognize past experiences differently than the way they occurred in order to satisfy internal desires of longing” (111).  In this style of writing, the normally ordinary objects become the focus of the story, creating a longing in the audience for the past.

Rice then moves on to William S. Burroughs and the idea of the cut-up, which involves taking a piece of writing and cutting it up into at least four sections and rearranging them into a new way (112).  This approach creates new ideas unseen in the text’s original state.  The experiment with language can produce alternative positions through association (113).  The audience is reminded that language is not a natural occurrence; we cannot simply look at a work as normal or natural, as large amounts of work go into wording and order.  This is especially true in the many advertisements seen on TV and in print, where many images are cut up, pasted together, and appear normal to the audience.

Juxtaposition is the next main idea introduced by Rice, which is where ideas have been placed together, including items that normally have little to do with one another (115).  This challenges expectations and enables us to create new concepts.  Burroughs felt that juxtaposition defamiliarizes images, language, relationships and roles that we take for granted (116).  The movie is the example used; the finished product is edited and spliced for the desired effect.  The tape recorder experiment of the Subliminal Kid captures the process of juxtaposition through his behavior (117).  He set up tape recorders at bars and cafes and remixes the recordings.  He then plays the final product, which is somewhat disorienting, but thought provoking, much like overhearing a conversation.

Chapter 12 focuses on the skratching, how it shapes it’s own literate practice.  We first look at literacy and its formation.  Literacy is often thought of as the ability to read and write, but it is much deeper, it is also the ability to construct words and meaning.  Technology has greatly influenced literacy throughout history.  The printing press made books more readily available, thus enabling more people to read and write.  The computer is a great example of how technology even today enhances our communication.  With the computer the internet and e-mail have becomes widely accepted forms of communication.  Skratching is used when taking something old, like the literature and making something new with it.  The previous paragraphs include many examples of skratching.  From the cut up to juxtaposition, each of these can be considered a part of skratching.  Skratching’s overall importance to writing is that it creates its own literate practice through innovation in computer technology (131).  It is a new language, much like our everyday language, it is forming a new way of communication.
 

In chapter 11 Rice discusses Kerouac’s spontaneous writing method in which sentences run into each other and ideas quickly with out much transition. This writing method is marked by a quick pace which Rice links to the speed of technological development of the 1950’s and 60’s. Spontaneous provides a look into the inner mind of the narrator. Kerouac’s rhetoric of race follows popular perceptions, or stereotypes, of races. Rice also discusses nostalgia, which he defines as the act of longing. Nostalgia is identified with reconstruction of past events in hope for their return. Kerouac used the memory process to invoke a nostalgic effect, and used details to link to other subjects. The cut-up is a way of turning writing on itself. It is cutting a writing into at least four pieces and rearranging them. It can be used to reveal hidden meanings or act as resistance to the text’s original meaning. Juxtaposition is an idea related to the cut-up. Juxtaposition is putting two unassociated (or contrasting) items next to each other. Juxtaposition can challenge our expectations and also help us invent new concepts and ideas. The ‘subliminal kid’ used juxtaposition in his recordings. He would record conversations of everyday life in café’s and other public places and cut them up and put them together to contrast them and learn from listening to them in his chopped up manner.

Skratching, or spinning records, shapes its own literate practice by serving as a model for how to create meaning with new technologies. Skratching blends new and old methods together to create its product. In the same way, we can use traditional writings methods along with newer technological advances in order to create a new form of expression.

Chapter 11 mainly focuses on the Beat Generation, a group of young, white, male writers gathering in Greenwich Village and San Francisco. These individuals all share feelings of disillusionment and alienation, and called themselves “The Beats” due to a sense of self-despair and holiness. These men gave birth to an entirely new movement in American literature. They felt as if the contemporary literary techniques in use at the time were not the best ways of expression, and they introduced new approaches to the construction of literature. Rice mainly focuses on two of these authors, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Both tried to echo the changes in technology in their writings. Kerouac’s works examined in the text were On The Road and The Subterraneans. He uses unconventional prose in which sentences run together and jump abruptly from idea to idea. Kerouac called this technique spontaneous writing. This was a very effective style to depict the speed of technology during this time period. Kerouac brought new dimensions into his writing, in which he assumes audience awareness, even when it may not be there. Another style the author uses is a distinct rhetorical racial perspective in his writing. Kerouac invokes nostalgia in his readers to achieve a certain emotion of longing, and alters the way one perceives the past. William S. Burroughs enlists the help of the “cut-up method” to rearrange and appropriate text in his novels. This method is a great example of a remix in that the author creates a new work by using old text from other literature pieces. This is also known as juxtaposition, and this serves to change our preconceptions on familiar ideas.

            Chapter 12 focuses on technology, and the influential role it plays in literature. Rice examines electronic writing in this chapter, in all different forms, including those prevalent in hip-hop and scratching. Hip-hop became what man DJs consider a modern form of literacy. DJs have used old records and turntables to perfect this craft, and it is a perfect example of how technology guides and shapes expression. Through the art of “skratching”, DJs can claim a new language, in turn creating a new literacy. Skratching involves the manipulation of a record’s rhythms and beats by controlling the record’s spin. These DJs were not necessarily financially endowed, so many were forced to build their own turntables out of old turntables or basically anything they could find. This is an example of remix because of the integration of old technology to create a piece of new technology. Rice concludes that this is a revolutionary new practice, and due to the fact that scratching is a rhetorical act, the act is actually its own literate practice.

Chapter 11

Chapter 11 gives us an overview about a new literary movement after WWII. The Beats, as they called themselves, were a group of disenfranchised writers that weren’t happy being apart of American Literature in the 1960’s. They created a new form of expression out of rebellion. Television and radio were new technological advances that provided people with new views and communication. It bought new ideas to the living rooms of many Americans. This created new perceptions and the Beats were concerned with alienation, marginality, and dissatisfaction with the staus quo.

Kerouac, the founder of the Beats, wrote many novels that inspired a new way of expression. He wrote about drug usage, interracial relationships, and inner city tribulations which were thought of as taboo. He wrote in a style that he calls spontaneous writing, which translates into run on sentences, non sequential formats, underdeveloped characters, and mental rambling. However, his style did communicate lots of analytical thinking with rich images, that creating a new style for the times. In Kerouac’s narrative The Subterraneans,his character Leo provides racist remarks for women which are non-anglo.This provides an upfront stereotype for his readers. This rhetoric of race expresses a certain attitude and cultural fear about non-anglo women that creates an attitude.

Kerouac uses a rhetoric strategy using nostalgia by bringing a reconstruction from the past and creating an interest for his readers, that long to be apart of the books present experience. In Kerouac’s novel Visions of Gerard, the narrator organizes memories in a way that makes the reader wants to engage.He also uses a commercial to make a connection for consumer’s that wish to buy Nike’s and be apart of the 70’s NBA team. The Nike commerical provides a connection to the product and an eventful time.

Burroughs, another Beat writer was concerned with the influence that the media, and government had on the American culture. He was concerned that the language and imagery that the general public was subjected to was more powerful than they were aware of. So he decided to turn writing back on the media. He used a style called the cut up, which rearranged sections and planned the usage of text to produce new meanings. He felt the media was desensitizing and impacting our behavior and decisions. The main point of Burroughs’ work was to encourage people to take notice that technology was being taken for granted. He encouraged people to look for the subliminal messages, and to think critically about what we see and hear.

Rice gives many examples of the cut up, with contemporary persuasive images of SUV car ads, and how we connect status and prestige with associations. This leads to juxtaposition, cutting up text and unrelated images with don’t really belong together but provide new ways of thinking about a product. The novel,The Subliminal Kid used juxtaposition with sounds that were collected and remixed to produce new ideas. Changing the arrangements of text and images is called juxtaposition. Rice challenges his readers to conduct a tape recording experiment, that captures sounds and those sounds get rearranged to create new sounds. This is a form of juxtaposition using sounds.

Chapter 12

In chapter 12 Rice emphasizes the role of technology in writing. He refers to basic writing tools such as the pen and pencils have changed how we receive information. Rice gives us a background to how hypertext has evolved and changed the way we communicate. He goes on to say that as writers we need to learn how to use electronic technology to enhance our writing. He provides examples of technological innovations and how symbols in software have become so familiar in the work place. Many software products are compatable with other the writing software and can be intergrating easily.

Hip-Hop culture uses a version of electronic writing with its style of scratching. With technology DJ’s have been innovative with mixers and turntables making old sounds into new music. Creating new sounds and labeling it a new language, have brought Hip-Hop to the top of charts and created a new literacy. Hip-Hop evolved from an oppressive culture, which is Black America. Through this oppression Hip-Hop has reinvented a way to express a new popular culture. Scratching provides a way of expression, scratching a new cool, and cutting our perceptions and creates new literate practices. It engages in critique, produces alternative views, and reproduces ideas. Rice ends this chapter by indicating that scratching can be found in the way students write today.

Chapter 11:

After World War II there were advancements in technology (television and the radio), as well as a shift in the perception of how a novel should be structured. Kerouac and Burroughs, two writers, attempted to duplicate their own writings. They had several approches.

Kerouac (accredited as the founder of the Beat movement) wrote a novel known as The Subterraneans. It uses unconventional prose. The sentences run into each other, andthe ideas switch quickly which is referred to as spontaneous writing. It was very crafted with careful editing.

Kerouac uses non linear descriptions to reference the love affair between the inter-racial couple in the novel. This makes the narritive comment on race in complex ways. Kerouac’s rhetoric of race is directly related to perceptions of racial identity.

Another rhetorical strategy in Kerouac’s work is nostalgia. Nostalgia is the activity of longing. It involves a reconstruction of past events which are idealized. Kerouac’s novel Visions of Gerard uses nostalgia to organize its’ narrative. He uses the past as a form of critique. Nostalgia is used with contemporary television. A Nike commercial uses events that took place in the 1970’s.

William S. Burroughs addresses the influence of media and government on culture. He is concerned with the effects media has on its viewers. He says that “writing is a powerful act that can be used against those who attempt to dominate our lives.” One method that Burroughs proposes is the cut-up. The cut-up involves taking a piece of writing,cutting it into atleast four sections, and rearranging it. It can reveal unspoken ideas. All wordprocessign programs such as Microsoft Word and Wordperfect allows us to cut and paste in any order.

Cutting texts and rearranging them into any order involves juxtaposition. Juxtaposition is placing items together including items that do not normally belong together. “This challenges our expectations by forming unexpected possibilities”, and it also allows us to create new ideas.

Burrough’s novel the Subliminal Kid remixes his recordings and plays them back in juxtaposition in a different order. It becomes disorienting and constructs new arguments about contemporary issues. The Subliminal Kid sets up tape recorders and transmitters in bars and cafe’s. It is then remixed. The Subliminal Kid’s tape recording experiement “feeds off of everyday language”. This experiement sparks the thinking process.

Scratching requires an understanding of how language works (literacy). Scratching requires skill to make it understandable and not just noise. This applies to writing as well. Scratching is much like freewriting. You put several ideas together to come up with one idea.It requires skill to make it meaningful.

Chapter 11

    Chapter 11 begins by discussing “The Beats”.  They were a group of writers that started their own movement in literature.  The chapter discusses Jack Kercuac’s, one of the members of the “The Beat”, spontaneous writing.  Spontaneous writing is when sentences change from one idea to another without having a transition.  It contains a random shift of ideas and narrations.  It has no particular order, but just constant rambling.  A writer can use certain words to inspire more ideas and make a random shift in topic.  It can be imagined as a writer who has many thoughts running through his head and trying to get it all written down.  Kerouac’s “The Subterraneans” is written in this format but purposefully and with editing.

     Rice states that Kerouac’s rhetoric of race is that instead of applying Kerouac’s personal views on racism we should approach it from a rhetorical view of his thoughts and words that he uses to describe race.  To better understand how attitudes are formed though rhetoric we should pay more attention not to the personal beliefs of the writer but the rhetoric ideas.

     Rice defines nostalgia as a longing of the past.  It is the longing of past feelings and situations and our desires for them to return.  Kerouac uses nostalgia as a form of critique.  He uses nostalgic feelings to tell a story, for example telling the story of a deceased brother the memory uses nostalgic experiences to retrive the past.

     Rice moves on to discuss another member of “The Beat”, William Burrough.  Burrough discusses the idea of the cut-up.  A cut-up takes place when a part of a writing is cut into different sections then arranged in a different order.  Therefore creating a new meaning from what was organially written.  For example we can take a political speech that has a particular meaning to it and have it cut-up.  After doing this the entire meaning of the speech is changed.  When we use word processor we use cut-up through the process of cut and paste.  Juxtaposition is basically the same thing as cut-ups.

    Burrough’s novel “Nova Express” showed a character named The Subliminal Kid.  This character experimented with tape recording.  The character would place recorders in various public areas.  He would use these recordings and mix them together and create a juxtaposition with new ideas and arguments.

Chapter 12

   In chapter 12 Rice discusses how skratching shapes it’s own literate practice.  To most people when they hear the word skratching they understand it as skratching records or also known as skratchadelia.  How does this techology of skratching apply to writing?  Rice answers this through Peter Elbow.  Elbow uses the example of freewriting.  We write all our ideas down and come back to sort out the writings into a meaningful idea.  In music freewriting is called freestyle.

The Beats, named for their feelings of despair, were a group of disenfranchised young, white, educated writers in New York and San Francisco who created a new American literary movement dealing with rebellion against the status quo. Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs were two writers from this group who created this new form of expression because they felt the traditional forms were not suitable for what they wished to express.

For these men, the shifts in public perception of gender and race necessitated adjustments to the structure of the novel. The growing technology of radio and television also influenced their thoughts on new methods of discourse. The effect this technology had on their thoughts of discourse and rhetoric can be compared to the effect the Internet has on current thoughts of rhetoric. The Internet opens doors for the creation of new ways to write.

Jack Kerouac known as the founder of the Beat movement wrote several novels. Rice focuses his discussion on Kerouac’s novel The Subterraneans, and the rhetorical style utilized by the author. The prose is unique in this novel in that Kerouac writes sentences that run into one another and his ideas switch quickly with little transition. He called this style ” spontaneous writing.” He wrote whatever came into his mind as quickly as he could. Though this style seemed to be spontaneous, it was actually deliberately crafted and edited. This style of writing commented on the social attitude of the time in relation to the rapid growth of technology in the 50’s and 60’s. This prose style creates a sense of mental rambling and assumes the reader is aware of the inner workings of the writer’s (Kerouac’s ) mind. Digression is key in this prose style and offers revealing information.

This style can also be very effective when writing for the web. Chain-formed writing is the result where the writer takes an image, switches to a related image, back to the previous image, then to another related image and so on. This non-linear progression of ideas can create powerful images, as long as the reader is culturally aware. Kerouac uses this approach to describe the interracial love affair between Leo and Mardou. Affection switches to racial prejudice and back again to affection. Racial prejudice in this novel is based on the popular perceptions of racial stereotyping. Kerouac’s story complicates the question of race and treats city life as the background of emotional tribulations, not necessarily race.

Another rhetorical form Kerouac employs is the use of nostalgia. Nostalgia is the act of longing for a romanticized version of the past, even if that past never actually occurred. Effective nostalgic writing creates in the reader a desire to relive the past, to experience something from the time period the writer refers to. In Kerouac’s novel Visions of Gerard, he positions the 1930’s as the ideal era. He tells the story using memory to recreate the past. This interpretation of the past is dependent on how the narrator sees the past and how the reader interprets it.

Rice points out here that in the past, computer technology was criticized for distancing people and distorting reality. It was feared that people would become reliant on machines instead of people. It was thought that using computer technology for writing would not be as effective as writing done by pencil or pen. These types of critiques using comparisons of the past and present are nostalgic forms.

Rice also shows how Kerouac’s usage of nostalgia is used in cool writing today as shown in the 2002 Nike commercial “The Harlem Years: 1975”. This commercial highlights the golden years of the NBA with images of basketball players in a game of pick-up basketball wearing the 70’s style short-shorts, knee-high socks and Afros. (Those were the days!). Vince Carter is the only one not dressed like this, but he is wearing the latest Nike Shox VC. The message of the commercial is if you wear this shoe, you will be like one of the great 1970’s basketball players.

Another Beat writer William S. Burroughs was concerned about the strong influence of the media and government on culture and how it dictated the way people dressed, lived, thought, etc. He believed the way to counter this influence was through writing. He created the writing style of the cut-up. This style of writing uses material that is considered controlling and turns it back on itself to create a new counter message. The method involves cutting up the original material and rearranging it to create a new message with new meaning that is resistant to the original text. Burroughs thoughts were that people are desensitized to and take for granted technology and media, not realizing the affects it has on cultural behavior. He thought it important for people to be aware of the textual construction of media and understand that policies and ideologies can be promoted through digital manipulation.

Rice comments on how advertisers use the cut-up method and he cites the example of SUV commercials that show a vehicle covering rugged terrain with ease. If consumers see this type of image as natural, then they are duped into thinking the event actually took place. Rice says that instead of using this technique for advertising, cool writers should try to apply this strategy to creating critique.

Rice also discusses Burroughs’ novel Nova Express and the character, The Subliminal Kid who tapes sounds and conversations in various bars and cafes and then plays them back in juxtaposition with one another in a different order constructing new ideas about contemporary issues. Rice discusses juxtaposition and how this method employs cutting up text and images that are not related to one another and rearranging them in order to create new ideas and foster creative thinking about familiar concepts. This mix of voices talking at once encourages the thinking process and shows how everyday language can be a comment on what is happening politically and socially.

In Chapter 12, Rice discusses information technology and how it is a very broad term. Technology can be anything from a pen, pencil, and the eraser to the computer. Computers employ various forms of writing applications such as word processing, power point, email and hypertext, just to name a few. In order to be effective writers, we must learn how to use this type of technology and keep current on the development of new technology.

Electronic writing uses technology to create anything from a website to a word processing document. In the early 80’s, concern arose that students would become too dependent on computers for writing and would possibly eliminate the personal involvement that writing with a pen or pencil involves. However, despite these fears, computers are used as the primary source for writing today. Word processing programs have eliminated the use of the typewriter, but have been widely accepted because the finished document has the same look as a document created on a typewriter. The cut and paste ability in word processing programs allows for the writer to use the cut-up method of writing and juxtaposition in creating documents. This form is rather easy to use as it utilizes writing in a way that is familiar. However, a more difficult form of electronic writing is hypertext. This uses alphabetic characters that are familiar, but puts them to use in an unfamiliar way to create text.

Another form of electronic writing used in Hip-Hop is skratching. This form of composition uses familiar technology in music, turntables and mixers, and utilizes them in a different way to create new sounds. Skratching has formed a new type of literacy and forces new thinking on how technology shapes expression by integrating the tools of technology (records and turntables) into the actual process. Skratching can be compared to the typewriter (old technology) and the word processor (new technology). Skratching takes the old technology (the turntable), blends it with new computer technology and turns it into something new creating Skratchadelia. Rice compares skratchadelia with the writing process. We the writers have various ideas that we want to convey, but we aren’t sure how to record them so that they make sense to the reader. He calls this “internal writer noise.” Educator Peter Elbow suggested that the way to get around this problem is to basically write down all your ideas at once and then sort through them later for a coherent idea. He called this process “freewriting” and it is analogous to skratching.

Literacy is the understanding of language and how it conveys meaning. Technology directly impacts literacy. Rice discusses how technology works in this way by citing the example of the printing press and how it made information more available to the masses. Today, the widespread use of the computer has created a new way of communication. Using the computer to create rhetoric requires computer literacy. A person must be knowledgeable of computer applications in order to use this type of technology. Hip-Hop uses this type of literacy through digital sampling, which allows music to be saved and then manipulated into new sounds.

Skratching involves the use of breaks and cuts, which break associative links to the previous recording. In this way Skratching becomes relevant to writing in that we construct ideas and arguments based on culturally formed assumptions and associations that we assume to be correct. Stereotypes are born from these culturally formed assumptions, such as the “angry black male” and the “self-made man”. The “self-made man” motif is based on the American cultural idea that if you believe in yourself and work hard to achieve your goals, you will be successful. But this assumption disregards factors that can be counter-productive to this theory. Race, gender, and other prejudices, economic disadvantages, health problems or issues, oppression or political situations and lack of educational access for whatever reason can have a negative impact on this definition of how to succeed. Rice claims that if you cut your associations with the phrase “self-made man”, you are being critical by “skratching” the phrase.

He continues by saying that throughout “Writing About Cool” he has asked us to cut our associations linked to the word cool and not refer to an object or person who is of high esteem and value as cool. This act is actually skratching the word cool. He challenges us to also scratch previous conceptions of literacy and to consider that by cutting our associations, engaging in critique and creating alternate viewpoints, we can see how skratching becomes a literate practice. However, he points out that skratching also needs a way to be recorded so that it can be repeated, kept alive and developed into new ideas. DJ Radar created such a writing system for skratching. This is another way that skratching has become another form of literacy.

Rice concludes the chapter by suggesting we take chances in our writing and apply skratching to our own writing practices.

In Chapter 11 “The Beats” Jeff Rice describes how the development of new technology over the past century has affected the structure of modern discourse. To illustrate this point, most of the chapter tells about two members of “the Beats.” The Beats were a group of educated white males that developed an innovative movement in post-War World II American literature. These influential writers concerned themselves with alienation, marginality, rebellion and a disastisfaction for status quo. Their writings concentrated on how technological innovations (television and radio at the time) altered the manner in which people communicated. The writers introduced new approaches to the construction of discourse as new methods of technology and communication developed.

Jack Kerouac, founder of the Beat movement, gained recognition for his unorthodox writing style and material. He utilized run-on sentences that quickly jumped from topic to topic and lacked transition– a method he called spontaneous writing. This spontaneous writing was meant to give the reader an intimate look into the thoughts and feelings of the narrator; instead of a third person point of view, readers are exposed to the mind of the characters. Often, spontaneous writing is a carefully thought-out process; it may appear as a jumbled mess of thoughts, but instead it is constructed to develop the image of spontanaity. This form of writing has important implications on the World Wide Web. Ideas are not presented in chronological order, thus breaks and digressions allow for the reader to develop their own perceptions and images about the message. Because these breaks serve as bridges or catalysts to the next thought, the placement of the breaks can be persuasive or informative, making spontaneous writing not spontaneous at all, but instead a carefully planned method of persuasion.

Kerouac often used spontaneous writing in his novels to comment on topics prevalent in society– in the case of Chapter 11, race. Kerouac’s rhetoric of race was to utilize negative predispositions about another race, (i.e., black) before identifying the race itself. For example, “Every time I see a Mexican Gal or Negress I say to myself, “hustlers,” they’re all the same…” Kerouac did not have to include the label Mexican or Negro in the description. But because he did, the reader is then exposed to a negative stereotype that he/she will carry with them through the rest of the book. Rhetoric shapes people’s attitudes, and it is very important for authors to put aside personal beliefs in their writing because while rhetoric should refer to how language is used and constructed, often the reader correlates the view expressed with the view of the author.

Another technique of rhetoric that Kerouac utilized was nostalgia. Nostalgia is the activity of longing, most often assocaited with reconstructing past events and feelings into a romanticized and idealistic picture. Often a nostalgic view or idea is better than the original occurance. Kerouac liked to focus on trivial and often mundane objects or tasks that could evoke euphoric feelings in his readers. Imagine the way the it smells outside after it rains. Now imagine if your first kiss happened outside just after a rainstorm. For some, that simple smell could evoke many pleasant memories and feelings. In nostalgia, simple details function as myths or dreams of the past.

Rice then moves on to another of the Beats, author William S. Burroughs. Burroughs concentrated on the effect of the media and the government on popular culture. Even during the 1940s, he felt that television, film, advertisements, politcial speeches, etc. dictated culture to the citizens of the United States. Obviously this idea is even more prevalent today; the development of satellite communications and the internet has made the popular media a ubiquitous force in society. To counter these forces, Burroughs proposed the “cut-up,” a method of taking a piece of writing, cutting it into multiple sections and re-arranging it to form a new meaning. Often, a new idea can be created, but there is not a subliminal message in every piece of writing out there. Many companies also use the cut-up in advertising. The ads are persuasive because the often connect or represent to ideas not typically associated with one another.

 Placing items and ideas typically not associated together is called juxtaposition. Juxtaposition challenges readers to consider new ideas, positions, perceptions and expectations by examining two unrelated ideas for a deeper meaning. Burroughs wanted to challenge his readers to use juxtaposition in everyday life. He believed that media forms were a pervasive and persuasive force that many people just considered a natural occurance. By challenging these media forms and rearranging corporate and political language, Burroughs believed he could gain control over how his audience was exposed to similar messages. He encourages readers to take in a variety of voices, sounds and ideas and hopefully develop their own innovative ideas.

One of Burroughs’ processes for juxtaposing ideas was a primitive form of digital sampling and mixing music. In his novel Nova Express, Burroughs cuts and pastes from newspapers, television, speeches and other literary works much in the same way hip-hop artists remix different beats, lyrics and literary ideas. Burroughs believes that his remixing sparked the thinking process, allowing people to invent and innovate. The novel’s major character, The Subliminal Kid, sets up tape recorders in different social settings. The Subliminal Kid then takes his recordings and reorganizes them in a juxtaposing and disoriented manner to construct new ideas.

 Although all of these methods for constructing discourse were proposed in the post- World War II era, they are even more relevant today because of the increasing number of communication channels. William S. Burroughs had a limited selection of media channels available, but today digital media such as the computers, satellite technology and the World Wide Web provide an infinite allocation of resources to today’s Subliminal Kid.

Chapter 12 “Technology” proposes a method very similar to Burroughs’ tape recording experiments through electronic writing. “Skratching” is used in hip-hop music to form new sounds and beats. Corporations like Gap, Burger King and even Wintergreen chewing gum use skratching in advertising. The juxtaposition of a clothing company and hip-hop music is an advertising strategy targeting young customers. Skratching also challenges convential thought, associations and assumptions. The previous chapters said that ideas are culturally constructed, so by skratching books, movies, politics, etc. we are exposed to a new and innovative way of thinking.

Skratching relies on the basic assumption that the audience is literate. While literacy is typically defined as the ability to read and write, it requires an understanding of how to use language in order to construct meaning. If words lack meaning, they do nothing more than simply fill up blank space on a page. Computer literacy requires that the web author knows how to create persuasive and meaningful discourse for his/her online readers. Computers open doors for a new realm of rhetorical possibilities, much in the way skratching opens doors for new ideas.

By using hip-hop skratching techniques, web authors can develop new ideas through and infinite and persuasive medium. Skratching is a form of cool writing that can break down barriers and assumptions, allowing both the author and reader to innovate and invent.

Chapter 13:

The usage of the internet has grown dramatically since 1992. One aspect of the web expansion is an increase attention to pop culture terms like the word cool. Rice says that “Cool has been used to describe technological innovation and future predictions”. Hewlett-Packard dreams of a future where our lives are intertwined with technology. This place where technology and our lives are entangled is known as Cooltown. The idea behind Cooltown is that this technology will benefit our lives and standard of living, and even enjoyment of our lives. Rice believes that Hewlett-Packard has two basic tenents relevant to our own writing: 1. Mobility, and 2. Interlinking of distinct activities. American Graffiti emphasizes this point because cars played an important role in teenagers lives in the 1950’s.HP’s vision of the future is much like that. Their vision of cool is one of interlocking systems.

Rice refers to Marshall McLuhan in order to understand Cooltown’s relevance to our own writing. In McLuhan’s 1964 book Understanding the Media, media was divided into two forms, hot and cool. Hot media requires little participation by viewers in order to understand the meaning. An example of this would be print and film. Cool media requires extensive participation. An example of this would be the telephone because it requires you to speak into one end so that you could be heard in the other. It needs at least 2 people to participate. Cool media requires so much participation that they force media to participate in each other’s production and meaning. We must see all ideas as interlinked. Based on McLuhan’s definition of cool “media rhetorically 1. are low in definition, 2. Require high participation by viewers and readers, and 3. Interlink with other media forms”. We can find discrepancies where his theory doesn’t hold up. McLuhan’s ideas about media and cool are relevant to anyone interested in electronic writing. McLuhan’s cool media has a commercial angle as well. HP’s standard of Cooltown uses cool to 1. attract a young customer by appropriating a word from popular culture, 2. Conceptualizing an interlinking society that is cool because of the ways that it forms connections between businesses and lifestyles.

Because of the spread of technology, corporations can sell more of their goodswhich is what HP is doing. This is called creating tie-ins. They are like product placements. Movies are a good example of this. When a movie comes out (like Harry Potter), there are sales of books, CD’s, clothes, etc.The interlinking of these is an example of cool media. CNN is anpother way of how tie-in’s work. It often features entertainment stories with headings for People Magazine (one of AOL Time Warner’s holdings. They own CNN). These corporations use digital media to interlink their products to establish a common customer base, and to advertise 2 or more products simultaneously. Another result is greater homogeneity. Yahoo uses tie-ins as well. They did so for the 2002 Grammy Award’s. Sometimes those who deride cool as a consumer industry become intertwined in its economic structure. Companies promote their products like they come form a variety of avenues, but in fact they all come from the same place. All of these are examples of cool writing as an economic activity.

Chapter 14:

How tie-ins effect digitial writing extend to cyberculture. In cyberculture, the internet interlinks a large amount of material through web pages, blogs, etc. The term cyberculture has different meanings for different people. Mass media represents this by the movie Blade Runner. Cyberculture is cool for creating a highly participatory atmosphere. When we refer to cyberspace as a collage we must become active in its creation much like a real collage. We need to acclimatize how we write for print culture to the demands of cool media. Berners-Lee wrote Enquire, a program that could record connections among projects with people a CERN (a physics lab located in Geneva).Scientist could see how their work was interrelated. This project resembles McLuhan’s. SportsLine forges connections between varied writers by making sure that each link goes to one another, or to the main page. The sute’s coolness derives on how it creates the copnnections. This kind of writing challenges our assumptions about how to identify writing by its author. “If we fail to recognize thateach piece of writing stands independent of the next, then the rhetorical effect causes us to emphasize the writing over its author”.

Everything2.com constitutes hypertext as cool for its ability to interlink. Hypertext can also be a collage.Everything is pretty much a common Web reading experience. SportsLine, and Everything2.com are examples of two different approaches that sites take to expand these experiences. Other websites use hypertext in a way that they have to spend time navigating through imagry before any meaning can be evaluated. Cool’s participatory characteristic can provoke emotions.In order to make sense of a site’s focus, we must construct our own meanings by choosing the texts and imagry the sites display. People may reject alternative forms of writing, but they will eventually come around. “Cool’s rhetorical value lies in how it prompts a unique form of participation.”

Remix is a mixture of many original ideas that become one new idea. Plagiarism is taking someone’s original work and making it your own. The difference is that remixes are many ideas made into one. That will take some originality in the process. Plagiarism is taking one idea and and making it your own with no originality added.

Manhood deals with the African American males and how they are portrayed in the media as angry men. They are made out to be drug dealers and pimps. Normally the media shows the bad side of a story and does not tell why the person is mad. If a famous African American male does something wrong, it runs on every news channel. When a good deed is accomplished you never hear a word of it.

Activity Page 73 Box #2

Death Row artists are portrayed as thugs. There are female thugs also. The best betrayal of black female thugs would be in the movie Set it Off. Queen Latifah, Jada Pickett-Smith, Kimberly Elise, and Vivica A. Fox are all bank robbers in this movie. Two of the characters are killed in the movie during separate bank robbing. Female Rappers have mythic personalities just like male rappers. Queen Latifah has been arrested for possesion of pot and for carrying a concealed weapon. Lil Kim has been found guilty of perjury and conspriacy and faces a year in jail. Eve and Trina are ex-strippers who have very sexually explicit lyrics degrading men.

Cool Pose discusses attitude as cool. Cool for many people is all in their attitude. How you talk, walk, dress, and even how you style your hair. When you look cool you feel more comfortable acting cool. Rappers are always setting new trends from vidoes, pictures, and album covers.

Cool is culturally constructed by religion, media, literature music, family traditon, and fashion. Evertything is culturally constructed. They are not ideas that are not taken from literature, but passed down from generation to generation. Culture is a major part of cool. In the 1960’s it was cool for whites to be better than blacks. It was fine for blacks to be oppressed and whites empowered. Blacks struggled to have a place in white America. This was a form of cool for Blacks. There struggle in society with cultural, economic and political issues.

Afican Americans were oppressed, but kept trying to be empowered. Great African American leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X, put hope in the hearts of many for equality. Blacks were denied access to white America. Cool for African American in the 1960’s was the hope for equality in the future.

In the chapter 7 it is cool to be an African American and oppression is a problem of the past. In hip hop, artists and DJ’s are sampling old records with their new songs. I believe these artists should not have to get permission or pay the original artists for their records. Will’s Smith’s “Getting Jiggy With It”, has a sample of Sister Ledge’s, “He’s the Greatest Dancer”. P-Diddy’s “I’ll be Missing You”, samples Police’s, “Every Break You Take”.

Sampling is using original beats from a record that is not your own. The new artist are bringing back the past with their new songs and that artist also

          Our group came up with the meaning of remix as acknowledging someone else’s work and reusing it by altering it.  Plagiarism is purposing using someone else’s work as one’s own without giving them credit.  How does one remix without plagiarism?  One must acknowledge who you are using and obtain a license.

Chapter 8

     Rice discusses in Chapter eight the roles played by African American males.  The roles that African males play are similiar to that which whites play, but have a certain quality in them that adds their African culture.  Men are mostly the one that are figures in entertainment.  Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro” attempts to turn the attention of white males affected from WW II.  Mailer sought the African American culture to do this.  He claims that white males liked the way African males carried themselves with sexuality.  He based African behavior, “as the basis for excitement and thrill” (69).  Mailer named these white males who copied the African American lifestyle, “white negos”.  To be cool from Mailer’s view was to copy the African lifestyle.  The problem that arises from this type of labeling is a stereotype.  Labeling Africans as sexual and with other traits, gives other cultures the wrong perception of them.

     In music the African label Death Row labels African males as people who are angry and violent.  They set the image of “gangsta” with the hip-hop music.  Death Row started a violent type of cool.  They depicted Africans as wanting revenge on society and express their emotions in a strong and violent way.  Lyrics uses commodities in their songs to better appeal to people.  For example, Cuban cigers and expensive things are used in gangsta lyrics.

Activity Box  P.71

       Other representations of angry black men that I located online is of music producers, dancers, and rappers.  These groups of people have the same attributes in their clothing, language, and where they were raised.  They all go for the thug, gangster look.  They like wearing jeans that hang off them, chains around their necks and most of them like to wear their hair in braids.  When I read about where they were raised they all shared a similiar story.  They were raised in a poor family with domestic problems.

      I don’t believe there are parallel images and sterotypes for women.  Women are kept from being labeled as, “angry” because of their feminine side.  They have always been looked at as the gentle mother and housekeeper who takes care of everyone.  Women might be labled as tough but not as angry.

Chapter 9

   Chapter nine discusses about attitudes.  African males feel obligated to dress and talk a certain way because they have to stand up against discrimination.  This is what Marlene Conner calls a ritual, or the cool pose.  These rituals helps them meet their needs with their public life.  This cool pose defends them from difficult times and hides certain emotions they feel.  Ethnography is when certain cultural groups are interviewed and observed.  This could be done by studying them at work, keeping records of their conversation, and noting repeated actions.