6,7, and done

Chapter Six looked at identity.  Some of it was quite familiar in other readings I’ve done about identity and rhetoric. However, I did find the idea of interpellation interesting. In the book it  describes it as how the media is inviting and makes the person want to read and I think this is a good point. While some social media can be argued as pandering I don’t think that is what interpellation means. After all, I don’t blame someone for wondering ‘why is this worth my time?’ or ‘why should I pay attention to this?’ If people want to hear about something the story will be better told.

Chapter seven deals with the rhetoric around hacking; specifically hacking as a form of protest. It brings up two definitions that became very important throughout the reading; hackavist and cyberterrorism. I agree with one of the arguments they were making; cyberterrorism as a concept is growing out of control and is now more of a scare tactic then anything else. You can’t just take every act of hacking and put it under terrorism; not only is it too broad of a definition to be useful it is also just too triggering. There is too much rhetorical baggage behind the word terrorism, baggage that shouldn’t be attached to certain forms of hacking. This hacking concept was being talked about under the broad idea of digital protest and I have to say I did find it rather interesting. There have been several examples of cyber protests and they are growing more and more popular all the time. The book brings up the good point that a lot of the talk around digital protesting also has to do with how society views the internet and technology in general; some clearly don’t understand it and therefore want to control it.

Chapter Eight: This chapter was the conclusion of the book and basically took the time to wrap up everything that’s been talked about. It also brought home the idea that rhetoric discourse can be and should be applied to what is happening ith today’s technology.