Procedural Rhetoric

This article started off with what sounded like a very interesting simulation program, that worked almost as if it were an "if, then statement" (if that makes sense). For example, if the teacher decided to one thing (option A), then this (reaction B) would happen, or if the teacher decided to do option B, then reaction B would happen. Kinda brought me back to my high school math classes a bit. But math isn't what the article is calling this simulation, it's describing it as procedural (rhetoric).

The article starts off with by breaking down the words procedural (the way things work including the methods, techniques, and logics that drive the opertaion of systems) and rhetoric (which it describes refers to the effective and persuasive expression). Put the two terms together and they form procedural rhetoric,  which is "the practice of persuading through processes in general and computation processes in particular."

The article then goes into great detail defining procedure and processes. Starting off with the traditional, more   familiar definition/cocept of procedures, which we see in bureaucraticies, politics and the law. This more familiar concept of procedure "invokes notions of officialdom", and is usually understood as as "established, entrenched ways of doing things." Then, after describing this, the article introduces computational procedurality, and shortly after brings in the notion that "procedural expression must entail symbol manipulatio the construction and interpretation of a symbolic system that governs human though or action."  (**This is where I had dreaded flashbacks to the Burke reading the other day AND when I realized that procedural rhetorics is evident in digital rhetorics...I'm beginning to wondering what digital rhetorics doesn't engulf....)

One last thing that really caught my eye from this article is where the article explains that "procedurality can...entail the operation of cultural, social and historical systems," and continues to say that it, "requires taking a set of cultural systems apart to see what logics motivate their human actors." Reason why, because articulation came to mind, that procedurality may call for articulation, for some reason that excited me.