Porter Part 1

Because this piece is so long, I'm going to break it up into two different parts, just like Porter did.

In the first section of this article we were taken back to traditional rhetoric. Refreshing our minds with the theories and principles of Aristotle, Quintilian  and some Cicero. The focus of this flashback was to review how delivery was once viewed in rhetoric, and to understand how it has changed over the centuries.

Similar to the range of choices and characteristics that the traditional rhetorical canon of delivery has, for example the body language, quality of voice, and hand, eye, neck and head positioning-  digital delivery has many "ethical, editorial, and political decisions involved," as well. Porter explains that, "understanding the range of digital delivery choices influences the production  design, and reception of writing is essential to the rhetorical art of writing in the digital age." Porter then explains the five components of "digital delivery": Body/identity, distribution/circulation, access/accessibility, interaction, and economics. 

*When I first began reading, I was very curious as to how this concept of delivery in the tradtional sense was going to be tied into the delivery of digital rhetorics- because I understood that delivery in the traditional sense was body language, tone, and positioning and knew that all of these aspects of delivery aren't capable of being exercised in digital spaces. This mean that this new dominance of digital rhetorics is somehow pulling principles of this traditional form of delivery and somehow, someway folding it into it's digital spaces and form of delivery.

A section of this reading that caught my attention was when Porter writes of Elizabeth Einstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. I think a very very important point is brought up when the invention and explosion of the printing press changed the way information was delivered and shared. Porter explains that, "Not only did the printing press play a significan role in distributing and promoting religious ideas in the 16th century, she points out that the ability of print to collect, perfectly replicate, and widely distribute common sets of mathematical and scientifica data enabled yet another revolution.."

*Further explaining that, "the new form of delivery changed knowledge itself,  it changed the parameters, procedures, and locus for what constitued religious truth and scientific knowledge; it changed who had the right to create, promote, and distribute knowledge, giving power to a wider range of voices."

*I find this to a very important point to remember- that as times change and new technologies arise, we have had the revolutionizing of how knowledge is created, stored and shared. This idea of how the printing press changed knowledge is completely applicable to the creation of Internet and the WWW.

More quotes I liked:

"One cannot be an effective digital writer without knowing both technical procedures and how to deploy them to achieve the desired end. The techne for digital rhetoric includes both technical/procedural knowledge and knowledge of audience and effect."

...more to come