Media Ecology/Ecomedia -- What is it? And South Park. . .again.

http://talisa3091.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/mediaecologies/

Hello again, world. It's been awhile since I've used this blog. I want to mainly just outline quickly some things I've been finding out about our two key terms for the semester.

1.) 'Ecomedia' -- In class, we seemed to focus our discussion on ecomedia around the types of texts, images, and films that participate in 'environmental' and 'ecological' discourses. We pointed out that many of the arguments made by television shows on animal planet and even some professional documentaries such as The Cove and maybe Blackfish may be critically examined not only in terms of the work's argumentative content or its politics, but also the formal techniques used to gather, present, and re-present the information.

(Side note: Using TinEye , I tried to trace the above image back to its "original" site. Many of the links were  broken links,  particularly some of the very early sites that used this image. Eventually I just gave up trying to get the "oldest" site. I was hoping to find out who generated/made the image, but my admittedly hasty attempts bore no fruit) 

South Park. . .again

 I personally have never seen many of these shows or documentaries, but I kept thinking about an episode of South Park (a constant reference for me): Whale Whores (a parody of Whale Wars). The episode suggests that the people on those on the show who present themselves as "badasses" who are combatting the perpetrators by 'any means necessary', actually are motivated partially by self-promotion (Look at me being an 'activist' on tv). South Park has poked fun at activism before (for instance, PETA), but not always to discredit activist values. Rather, they are more interested in how their values are transformed into practical action. 

The activists on the South Park version of Whale Wars throw rancid butter at ships, but Stan decides that such action is bullshit. He starts to really blow up the ships. This is just one example of South Park indictment of mild activists presenting themselves as, for instance, 'pirates'  (and the commercialization/televisualization/visual rhetoric of these so-called 'activists'). 

I recommend watching the full episode of "Whale Whores" (for free) on southparkstudios.com. At the end of the episode, we find out that the "real" reason the japanese hunt and kill dolphins and whales is because the united states gave them a doctored picture of the WWII bombings where Dolphin and Whale were in the cockpit -- not for food, not for sport, not because of cultural tradition. 

Instead of telling them the truth, they decide to make up another lie. It wasn't dolphin and whale, but Chicken and Cow (another doctored photograph is presented). 

We then see the Japanese raiding farms and killing all the cows and chickens. To which Randy says deadly serious as he watches the massacre: 

"Great Job, son. Now the Japanese are normal. Like us."

Thus, the viewer is left to ponder the contradiction in our society: Luke warm activism to save creatures because they are either endangered or aesthetically pleasing to human beings -- to the point of critiquing the country and culture that do not 'protect' these creatures -- but at the same time in our society condoning the "making killable" (Haraway) of millions of cows and chicken for mass food consumption. 

Furthermore, by giving the Japanese a picture of Whale and Dolphin at the cockpit (admittedly an absurdity that only South Park could pull off), the episode shows how indifferent we once were to their killing -- as long as it wasn't us! But then, we noticed that we could make a cool tv show and pretend to care -- so we just shift the sacrifice (but they aren't sacrifices -- just killable -- c.f. Haraway, Derrida, Wolfe) to "normal" things to kill. 

Why am I talking about South Park? Because I think that it usefully interrogates society's contradictions, usually ones that regard the division between theory and practice.

Though if I remember correctly, in the animal studies edition of JAC, one contributor discusses the "real" guy that stars in Whale Wars. I might want to reconsider that piece to show how South Park, as all satire does, simplifies the perception of this man as well. It's true: they are guilty of many an ad hominem attack. . .

But the more I watch this episode, the more I realize it needs a blogpost of its own for a full analysis of the show in terms of media, satire, critical animal studies, and environmental activism. 

Ok, just one more point. On "Whale Whores," we also see South Park calling attention to the formal techniques and rhetorical strategies shows like "Whale Wars" deploy in order to present a particular narrative. When Cartman realizes that the show is now successful, he pretends to care about the cause and becomes part of the crew. 

The first thing sign of this shift of concern is when narrator of the show begins to talk not about the conflict between the Japanese, the whales, and the activists, but rather narrates a battle between a show about Crab Fishing (Deadliest Catch or another similar show). (They shout back and forth: "Your show is fucking gay" "YOUR show is fucking gay" etc.).  Before this, the 'crew' is on Larry King Live (which actually happened and can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kimcoJc7wcw) and South Park Larry is only interested in how they created a "hit TV show." They even bring on an expert who also their creation of a hit tv show rather than their political practice.. Thus, the show becomes centered around not only what they are purportedly doing to save the whales, but its construction as a tv show!

One particularly poignant moment is when Cartman has his first one-on-one camera interview. 

As emotional music plays in the background, Cartman, identified as "deckhand since 3 hours ago" says, "It's really hard you know, really tough. It's like we dedicated all this time and all our lives to saving these majestic creatures. [Kenny mumbles and cries, Cartman comforts him] Shhhh, Kenny. Old ken's taking it especially hard. He's always loved dolphins so much that he. . . .Yeah, yeah, but keep it in a two shot though, keep in a, yeah, there you go"

Here Cartman calls attention to how he's being cut out of the shot. This is the kind of "behind the scenes" inserted into the scenes. Again and again throughout the episode it calls attention to its means of construction. 

Ok, I'm done with South Park now. 

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"Ecomedia" as a term

So I googled Ecomedia and what did I find? That the term has been co-opted by an advertising agency. It's mission statement states: 

At CBS EcoMedia Inc., we have a vision: To harness the power of advertising and channel it into tangible social change.

And boasts that "an award winning company, founded by a team of environmentalists and social entrepreneurs" 

Now, on the one hand, we were talking a lot about marketing in class. However, it seems like this is not exactly the idea we have of ecomedia. But, given that we were supposed to poke around at how the term is being used, it seems useful to notice the way the term has been appropriated. Furthermore, the rather excessive amount of links google brings up to that company before getting to a more 'academic' encounter with Ecomedia. Cubitt's book by the same name doesn't show up till page 2 of the google search. 

Ecomedia also does not have a presence on Wikipedia. Media Ecology, however, does. 

Media Ecology as a Term

Partially due to the Media Ecology Association, the term media ecology seems to circulate more within an academic conversation. The Media Ecology Association offers definitions from Mcluhan, Strate and Postman, but really doesn't venture further than these canonical figures. 

The Wikipedia page for Media Ecology was a bit more elaborate. It recognizes the contributions of those mentioned on the Media Ecology Association website, but attempts to incorporate some of the more recent work, some of which we will be exploring in the course. 

However, there are some strange distinctions that, while grounded in truth, seem suspect. The wikipedia article makes a distinction between the "North American" media ecology and "European Media ecology" 

The European version of media ecology rejects the North American notion that ecology means environment. Ecology in this context is used 'because it is one of the most expressive language currently has to indicate the massive and dynamic interrelation of processes and objects, beings and things, patterns and matter' (Fuller 2005:2). Following theorists such as Felix Guattari, Gregory Bateson, and Manuel DeLanda the European version of media ecology as practiced by authors such as Matthew Fuller and Jussi Parikka presents a post-structuralist political perspective on media as complex dynamical systems. (Wikipedia) 

The writer(s) of this post seem to assume there are two totally different traditions opposed to one another -- which in some ways, goes against a kind of "media-ecological" explanation of the emergence of the very term 'media ecology', right? This reader at least is left wondering what the writer means by a "post-structuralist political perspective on media as complex dynamical systems." 

Granted, this is Wikipedia, but I'm casting my net wide here. I want to see what kind of stuff pops up when I google things. Furthermore, I'm not sure that The European version of media ecology "rejects the North American notion that ecology means environment" 

Particularly in Parrika's case, whose book is called Insect Media, it seems that Parrika is very interested in thinking ecology in terms of environment, but not just the human environment, however. Rather, "environment" in the sense of systems theory or within the paradigm of Jacob von Uexkull's biosemiotic environmental theory. The three definitions offered by the Media Ecology Association all imply that media ecology concerns media's impact on humans. 

But "media," as Robert Mitchell reminds us in his book Bioart and the Vitality of Media, also means "nutrient media." A "media" that is the kind of source of food and catalyst for growth of biological entities.So maybe its not just "systems" and "networks" and "communication technologies" but "media" can also be thought of in the way that Sid Dobrin characterizes writing as saturation. However, whereas Dobrin characterizes saturation as a kind of active and potentially violent act, the other side of saturation is a soaking in. In some ways, perhaps this concept of media (drawing on the biological terminology) is closer to Thomas Rickert's idea of "Ambient rhetoric" or "ambient environments." But Dobrin's emphasis on fluidity, especially considering the biological connotation, I think remains important. Whereas we might find it odd to think of "writing" in terms of fluids (in various viscous states) "media" (and for Dobrin I suspect these terms are all but equivalent) is easier for us to imagine. We already use fluid metaphors to talk about the "overflow" of information. It's a veritable ocean that we must navigate while being engulfed in it ourselves. 

In my next blog post, I hope to go into a summary, extension, and potentially critique of Mitchell's book on Bioart. This initial exploration will also help me to re-frame and re-compose pieces of my thesis for my upcoming presentation at Rice University's English symposium. 

On "Writing Studies" and recent projects

"Writing studies," is a somewhat hypothetical discipline (insofar as we still don't see research positions in "writing studies," but rather "new media," "communications," "composition,"  "rhetoric") mentioned in Sid Dobrin's book Postcomposition, as a way to mark a form of disciplinary research apart from "composition," traditionally associated with First Year Writing and 'research' on pedagogical methods. In Dobrin's own words,

Thus, the primary agenda of Postcomposition is to argue for a move
beyond the academic work of composition studies in favor of the revolu-
tionary potential of the intellectual work of writing studies, specifically the
work of writing theory, an endeavor likely best removed from the academic
work of pedagogy and administration." (Postcomposition 24). 

Too often in composition, 'writing' is tied to a subject, usually a student subject. Writing as an expression of that subjectivity or writing as constituting that subjectivity. For Dobrin, 'writing' should be the focus of a 'writing studies' such that the subject cannot be torn from the inscriptional practices themselves. I like to think of this as thinking each inscriptional practice as a performance of a subjectivity, one that can only be described through that particular assemblage of inscriptional practices. That is, "subject," is no longer an expression of a human being or a consciousness, but the particular moment of inscription. The human and nonhuman actants work together to inscribe a 'subject' (if we still even want to preserve that term, so as to preserve a sense of agency). Byron Hawk gets at this through Deleuze and Guattari's ideas of the 'molecular' and the 'molar' in A Counter History of Composition:

"Meaning, purpose, and intention all are molar and separate subject and object, but the desire and the force behind them are molecular and collapse subject and object [. . .] The subject is a molar residual, off to the side, a side effect of desiring-machines, not a single center from which desire is born" (165).

 Raul Sanchez argues in his 2012 article, "Outside the Text: Retheorizing Empiricism and Identity," that the subject is neither an 'effect' nor an origin or something that precedes a moment of inscription:

"Identity names this singularity, which is neither a precursor to the act of writing nor merely its effect. If we no longer say that identity is expressed through writing, but rather that identity names the moment of inscription-the intrusion or emergence into Judith Butler's "grammatical time of the subject" (117)-yet is only available in and after writing as writing's condition of possibility, then we can also say that identity manifests, at once metaphorically and materially, in both the figure and the body of the writing-subject. These claims make it possible to recognize that there is neither an origin story for the "moment" of inscription nor an aporetic limit at which one must hover perpetually. They make it possible to name the act of writing, the moment of inscription, as that which marks a convergence of time, space, and linguistic code at the production of a text. More important, they make it possible-necessary, actually-to use this very convergence to embody, figuratively and empirically, the convergence itself. They make possible the writing-subject as both thing and word, object and concept."

The writing-subject in this sense is an event -- an event that draws together all of the actants, human and nonhuman. As Latour puts it in We have Never Been Modern, "History does something. Each entity is an event" (81). 

Ok, so the writing subject is linked to an act of inscription. Is writing simply any act of inscription? In broad terms, yes, it is. Every event leaves traces -- I would be tempted to say irreversible 'traces'. "Writing" ever since writing scholars' took notice of Jacques Derrida, has been refigured as 'the trace' in general. "Writing" is not necessarily about conscious invention and arrangement of an essay, but writing could be as simple as a mark on a wall or an animal's tracks. 

If this is truly the case, then scholars of "writing studies" are able to study practically anything as writing, as acts of inscription, of traces. My question, however, is what do we get by understanding in terms of 'writing' rather than 'rhetoric'? Are there not rhetorical limitations to the word 'writing'? Although his tone bothers me, I can't shake Ian Bogost's point in Alien Phenomenology that, "writing is only one form of being" (90). Of course, the problem with his statement is how he slips from 'writing' to "language" and then proceeds to deny the medium of writing and even language of a certain materiality, so brilliantly traced by Derrida. Bogost writes that in contrast to philosophical works (with the exceptions of Derrida, Nietzsche, or Wittgenstein) "philosophical works generally do not perpetrate their philosophical positions through their form as books. The carpenter, by contrast, must contend with the material resistance of his or her chosen form, making the object itself become the philosophy" (93). Here Bogost makes two mistakes: 1) seeing Derrida's form as a "book," when Derrida explicitly attempted to subvert that very medium, and 2) denying the inseparable bond between medium/form and content. 

In other words, Bogost makes no meaningful distinction between writing/carpentry outside of the fact that carpentry seems to lead us to 'doing philosophy' with objects other than the pen and paper. But if we understand writing as any trace, then these 'carpentry' projects of philosophy are just as much 'writing' as they are carpentry. Furthermore, the 'designation' writing, given its rigorous deconstruction by Derrida, avoids some of the baggage that 'carpentry' contains -- an emphasis on the 'hand made', for instance. 

Thus, carpentry just becomes a better metaphor for describing the practice of 'philosophy'. But what exactly is 'philosophical' about Bogost's projects? Of course this depends on our definition of philosophy, but if philosophy is the "invention of concepts" as Deleuze and Guattari contend, then Bogost's projects are not philosophy, even if they contain an 'affect' or a 'percept', which is the domain, according to D&G of ART. 

Within Derrida's understanding of writing, however, such art works would be considered "writing." But what do we get from describing artworks within a general system of writing? Does it erase the specificity of it being art or does it put into question the boundaries of what constitutes the art "work" (does it include all of the 'writing' and 'responses' that take place because of it? . . .and any possible future response?). 

Currently, I'm trying to adapt a significant piece of my writing on BioArt to a writing posthumanism. In my original piece, I framed the project in terms that would preserve these works as art, even if, at the same time, the artwork is always within a complex system of writing events, which will affect the function and efficacy of the artwork (critics reviews, theoretical statements from the artists, etc.). 

The question I have for myself is: what is it about BIOART that makes visible art as entwined within a writing system of human and nonhuman actants? My hunch is that by using 'life' materials as their medium, there is an increased probability of the artwork to not simply be the subject of writing surrounding it, but 'writes us' in some unique way. There is an unpredictableness, a propensity for failure that can be made visible through Bioart that reveals the general conditions of artworks: the possibility of their 'failure'. However, it is precisely the failure of BioArt that gives it's significance for biotechnological practices because the force of this failure is to recognize our inability to simply program and control life through genetic coding or otherwise. We can substitute "writing" for genetic coding, since there is no real way to control, in this age, the effects of our writing practices. What is the fate of this blogpost? What videos go viral? BioArt also is potent example of how our best laid plans can be foiled by nonhuman agency. 

But then, does BioArt simply become a stand in for any "writing?" Indeed, could not the same point be made with other artworks or even other inscriptions? Is there something that BioArt adds to our understanding of 'general writing' (that is, 'writing studies') or is the point of writing studies to show the very specificity of this writing practice? But then would we not succumb to the temptation of 'rhetorical analysis'? What words, what concepts does BioArt suggest that would be an essential supplement to our understanding of writing-as-system? 

These are the issues I am struggling with as I attempt to integrate some very specific research on an important group of artists and artworks in the biotechnological age. 

Reflection on course goals, teaching, assignments, and readings

After class today, I started to think about why I decided to give you all such difficult, long, and obscure texts. As I have said several times, these texts are hard even for me with my extensive background in philosophy, cultural studies, literature, and to a certain extent, politics. Part of their difficulty, as many of you pointed out, stems from their length. I agree with all of you that it is more realistic (from a teaching/learning/pedagogy) standpoint to decrease the length of the readings per day, breaking them up or potentially omitting large sections that I can then summarize.

Allow me to think quantitatively for a minute, here. We have had approximately probably about 2 hours (maybe) to discuss each reading, if I give more time to the readings than say lecture or in class activities. While the blog posts (mine and yours) as well as my responses supplements this, I realize that this is not the same as "live" discussion. The Foucault, for instance, is probably about 30-40 pages of a "normal" book (even though its only about 25, give or take, in Ways of Reading).

In graduate seminars, we generally discuss a 250-300 page book in 3 hours. That said, we rarely cover the entire book in 3 hours, something that has frustrated me as someone who really enjoys discussing the little details of the book. Furthermore, its a graduate seminar, so most of us are expected to be able to discuss teh book as a whole.

But rarely do we discuss the particular "rhetoric" or "writing" of the book itself, which is ostensibly what 1102 is supposed to use the readings for.

So what is my point and why am I talking about my graduate seminars? My point is that the major reason I assign all of the text (and don't break it up) is to try and help you in your selections of information/citations and how to make it meaningful. When you do research, some research articles (at least  peer reviewed ones) will be 20-25 pages long  and if you have to cite 8 sources, that is 20x8 = 160 pages of material that you have to sort through to find a few points to include in your 2700 (10-12 page) research essay. If you use books, you need to try and wade through information/text in order to find a point that you can use to support your own argument. This is not easy I tell you, as someone who reads hundreds of pages a semester.

This process of selection, however, is not as difficult as wading through something like Foucault, a complex, abstract, philosopher/historian/theorist that I still have not "mastered" (nor ever will--no one has). Most books/articles will have indexes, abstracts, and sometimes breaks in the article indicated by section titles. These are tricks that you will need to learn in order to manage the amount of research necessary to produce your own work.

Furthermore, I recognize that the majority of us do not encounter such complex texts on an every day basis. The longest piece of writing we are apt to read nowadays might be a two-three page article on the huffingtonpost, but most of writing comes in headlines, soundbites, videos, images, or textbooks (a form of writing that is structured to help students understand meaning). Selection seems determined less by the complexity of the information and more by the amount of the information, each of it easily understandable--for the most part.

The texts that we have looked at disrupt our normal processes of interpretation of meaning and on could make the argument that they may not be rhetorically effective for even a general, educated audience such as yourselves and the public at large (I would include myself, but a lot of these texts fall under my academic specialty --theory/philosophy).

To recap, if we only have 2 hours (approx) that we can devote to an explication to these texts and they are not broken up into sections (such that then the questions might become: what makes this section of Foucault different from the section we discussed yesterday, last week, etc) and texts in the Ways of Reading complicate interpretation and are not representative of the type of research you will encounter and do encounter on a day to day basis, which is more 'accessible' to a certain extent, rhetorically speaking), then it would only be logical to conclude that the readings introduce upon the stated goals of the course in its title: Rhetoric and Academic Research.

In other words, first, if we cannot even understand the basic concepts we are working with, it is doubtful that we will be able to discuss the rhetorical choices of these authors nor will be able to discuss how you can "use" these rhetorical strategies in your own writing or how the rhetorical choices made by the author affect what he or she is trying to say. Second, if our readings are in both meanings of the term, the "exceptional" works (meaning, not the norm but also those that exceed the norm in meaning and richness), than the readings do not prepare you to encounter a typical academic research article.

If you were (or are) working in the realm of theories of power, Foucault is useful to know and indeed you may encounter his name again; if you are working with art criticism, history, and media theory, Berger is an essential voice in the field; but the sad (?) truth is that the complexity of someone like Foucault is greatly reduced in academic texts because they are, like you (and me) readers more often than producers of those "primary" texts that are so rich with meaning that people keep reading and re-reading them.

Very few of us will write like Foucault (including me) and many people outside academia find him, like you may have, impenetrable, dense, convoluted, overrated, obscure (pick your pejorative adjective), but some of us (me included) might write about Foucault or use/cite Foucault. However, that may not involve an explication of  his texts, carefully constructing meaning (many people have already done this work).

This is what makes videos and images so great to teach. Still, we must balance this with a reading of written texts because it is necessary to integrate these written texts in order to support one's argument.

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Possible strategies for future courses and/or later this semester

But it is hard to decide what "level" of texts to present. On the one hand, giving news articles only presents us with a journalistic style and rhetoric. op-ed articles are good, but in a way lack the complexity, depth, and breadth of research than an academic article. Academic articles tend to be specific to the academic discipline and address issues that may only be meaningful within that paradigm or if one is familiar with the more 'primary' texts of the field. More 'personal' essays (some of which are in Ways of Reading) may include elements that the writer uses skillfully that may not be acceptable in an academic article or that beginning writers may not use as effectively--perhaps this is why Bartholomae and Petrosky recommend imitating the style. Fiction, although it usually contains implicit arguments, can be even more ambiguous about its "meaning" or the argument its making than the theoretical work we have engaged in. Not to mention, many of you are not literature majors and this technically is not a "literature" class. I do not want this course to be a repeat of your high school literature and language courses and I'm sure you don't really want that either.

The honest truth is that you will learn about the conventions of writing in your discipline; I am not fluent in many of these conventions. These conventions would also lead to a construction of different assignments than analysis, synthesis, annotated bibliography, and research paper. Due to university/department conventions, goals, and restrictions, I am obligated to constrain myself to these major assignments. But more importantly,  since many disciplines require data, experiments, illustrations, measurements--aspects of your discipline I am ill equipped to teach you--I cannot think of how I would construct such assignments that would fit our allotted time schedule.

And so perhaps this is why the course is labeled Rhetoric and Academic Research rather than Rhetoric and Academic Writing. While research processes may be similar (at least when one is researching textual sources, which, regardless of your discipline, you will have to do) the writing produced from this research has its own conventions for making meaning and displaying data.

Therefore, rhetoric can be explained through video clips, images, various different written documents. These should be texts with relatively clear arguments, 'ordinary' language (not necessarily colloquial), and of moderate length given the time we have in class to work on them. This could allow me to choose different articles that we have not discussed in class for our major assignments, but which are "comparable" to the genres and lengths of texts we have discussed in class. Of course, this risks the assignments having less to do with classwork and thus may provide less continuity and unity to the course as a whole (but perhaps this was always a forced unity). On the other hand, as long as these other texts were analogous in theme, it would seem less like the class exercises did not contribute to a larger understanding.

Perhaps introducing something new that we do not discuss in class in addition to 2 articles that we do discuss in class might allow for some tension to form in theses and in the essays in general. Perhaps the two articles in class can be shorter whereas the third one will be longer and more complex, forcing students to figure it out with one another--on the blog or otherwise. Perhaps this would help create tension in the thesis or in the interpretations of the articles. This would also free up more time for other activities besides discussion of texts.

What is Technical Communication?

What is Technical Communication?

I would like to suggest today that technical communication is about revealing the complex and abstract reasoning behind rhetorical choices made in forming every-day documents/forms of writing in order to both better understand and produce these documents. While I believe it is possible to describe many documents as “technical” communication, these documents are technical because of their focus on usability rather than abstract reflection or contemplation (essays, philosophy, literature, art, etc.). I believe that these every day communications should be discussed more ‘philosophically and abstractly’ because we tend to forget that each piece of writing and communication has been designed to make us act in a certain way. Technical communication can, at the very least, make these every day encounters chances for reflection and learning as well as give us more agency in the production and circulation of these documents.

The way I have structured this presentation is around the idea of “concrete choices.” While analyzing a poem usually involves finding the abstract meaning of the text on the page—even though we may describe the figurative language—we rarely consider the poem as a document in the world, produced by an individual, laid out in a particular way, published by a company, distributed in various collections and editions, etc. These seemingly minute choices make a document usable and unified.

The most common definition of ‘concrete’ is opposed to the abstract: “Combined with, or in embodied in matter, actual practice, or a particular example; existing in a material form or as an actual reality” (OED). However, initially the word meant “united or connected by growth” (OED). The other meaning of the word, as you can see in my presentation, refers to the substance we refer to as “concrete,” which was probably named after another definition: “made up or compounded of various elements” (OED). According to concretenetwork.com, concrete is composed of three things: water, cement, and ‘aggregates’ (rocks and sand). However, while many people buy bags of concrete without any concern for what type, concretenetwork.com reveals that there are many different mixtures of concrete for different applications. Before purchasing, you should ask several questions: “What slump do you need? What strength? Do you need entrained air? What happens if the day is particularly cold or hot? What size of aggregate is best? Should you ask for fly ash in the mix?” (concretenetwork.com). We often don’t think about the many choices that go into creating concrete—it’s too integrated into our day-to-day routine. However, if we look at the people who know concrete, we can see that it can involve subtle choices that will make or break a project.

Similarly, there are three basic elements/components to composing documents: text, visuals, and design/layout (how these relate to together). The visuals are like the water that create the medium and the ‘flow’ of the document, the text is like the rocks and sand (giving it its grit), and the design and layout is the type and amount of cement that holds all of this together. Concrete can be messy, chunky, and unorganized—and it needs to be mixed well in a truck, but concrete creates the foundation for our everyday existence. Concrete forms a smooth sidewalk, that we barely acknowledge as existing under our feet, but needs to be usable, functional, and aesthetic for the city to run smoothly.

 Technical documents are these structures—sidewalks and floors—that allow our lives to run smoothly. If we were to notice the sidewalk—its components, its cracks, the way it is separated into squares, we could compare, contrast, and evaluate sidewalks abstractly based on their use, function, and aesthetics, just as we could evaluate a literary text or a philosophical idea. Technical documents, even the ones that seem boring or natural, can become complex and rewarding when we pay attention to the concrete behind the smooth surface. The technical documents that we compose and receive, such as tax forms, receipts, bills, contracts, may be locked away out of sight in our desk drawers or file cabinets, but they are the documents that structure the ‘concrete’ connections to other people and institutions as we go about our way.