Zemmels

This reading was basically the history of rhetoric. While I still don’t think of the internet as old (because it is getting up there and years and that means I’m growing up and lalalala…I shouldn’t write these blog posts so late at night). But everything has a history to look through, and so I think this reading is important.

I think Zemmels had a good point when he said that the internet is fragmented and dispersed. And I had never really thought about it before, but I do feel that it has a large effect on its rhetoric; from the discourse, the audience, to the authors.

Once again I’m reading about how rhetoric has had to change for the technological age so it can better address the discourse that comes from an online space. But I wonder if this is such a big surprise? I mean I have a feeling that this is not the first time rhetoric has had to evolve for a new type of artifact. What about the first time they came out with magazines? Or when movies and then tv was first established? I have a feeling that rhetoric had to change for all of this so I’m not sure why the authors I have read seem almost surprised that this has happened. It’s going to happen again, I’m sure.

I like the sound of this rhizome model. “A system of relationships without a center” sounds like a pretty cool way of describing the internet. This also gets at the idea that the internet can be fragmented; these relationships come together on some level, but on other levels they are