M.I.A. can respond. Uh-oh.

Just over a year ago, I blogged about Jared Diamond being sued for libel by a research participant, and I pointed out my chapter in Amy Kimme Hea's collection predicting that participants would exercise increasing power to "talk back." As I said in that chapter, current human subjects guidelines assume that the researcher enjoys an asymmetrical power relationship to the participant since the researcher has a publication avenue - a way of representing the participant - and the participant doesn't have a reciprocal way to represent themselves or the researcher. That assumption, I argued, is now false because everyone has access to publication avenues, and therefore researchers need to protect themselves by using measures that keep participants on board - such as member checks.

So over the last few days, we've seen another example (thanks to my flagger for spotting this one). Recording artist M.I.A. didn't like how the New York Times reported its interview with her, so she's done exactly what I predicted participants might do: she has disputed particular points, posting her own recording of the interview as evidence. It's fascinating, and it opens the black box of reporting in ways that were unthinkable a few years ago. She's also tweeted the cell phone number of the reporter - which seems like burning her bridges, but M.I.A. is comfortable doing this (I assume) because she realizes the NYT needs her more than she needs it.

This incident might be amusing, but it should also be a wake-up call for qualitative researchers. At the very least, use member checks. Think defensively, but also cooperatively. Don't think of these people as subjects but as gracious hosts. Be true to your evidence and give them a chance to present their own framing for that evidence. Find ways to reach detente. Oh, and read my chapter!

Reading :: Material Markets

Material Markets: How Economic Agents are Constructed
By Donald MacKenzie

"Financial derivatives" is not a term in good odor these days. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, financial derivatives have been characterized by some as a "scam," a way to create money out of thin air via abstract models. In Material Markets, Donald MacKenzie applies actor-network theory (ANT) to a study of finance - including financial derivatives and arbitrage - to examine these apparently abstract, ethereal products as material. The book doesn't break much ground theoretically, but it does provide a solid application of ANT to finances.

Social studies of finance (SSF), MacKenzie tells us, are "inspired by social science research on science and technology" (p.2). And like the research that inspired it, SSF emphasizes "the materiality of markets: their physicality, corporeality, technicality" (p.2). MacKenzie comes up with several fascinating examples of this sort of materiality. For instance, he describes "broker's ear," the ability to fully pay attention to one conversation while simultaneously listening to all the other conversations in a room (p.12). He also emphasizes the role of what is normally translated as "assemblages," but which he insists on calling "agencements" (preserving the French double meaning of arranging/fitting together and of agency; see p.20). He finds "assemblage" to be too passive (p.21). Tracing an agencement, he says, is formally endless; instead, he wants to focus on aspects that are not obvious (p.57). And since he's focusing on finances in particular, he draws more heavily on Callon than on other ANT theorists.

With this grounding, he first turns to derivatives contracts. Contract design, like technological design, is an inherently political problem, requiring balance and compromise so that all participants' interests are represented enough to entice them to trade (p.70). In this chapter, MacKenzie examines the ins and outs of designing, implementing, and using such derivatives, focusing on the material conditions that let them function.

Next, MacKenzie examines how arbitrage is enacted, again taking a materialist standpoint ("a price is a thing," p.92). In the process, he brings in several examples of how this materiality is enacted. Futures traders are encouraged to play video games to increase reaction speeds (p.96). Traders wear platform heels to better their vantage point in the pit, and they jostle and even engage in fistfights in order to gain the best vantage point (p.97). At a desk trades complex, different types of arbitrage correlate to different spatial arrangements and proximities (p.97). Through these and other examples, MacKenzie produces a rich, qualitative understanding of arbitrage, in contrast with the abstract, quantitative understandings that are typically sought by economists (p.107).

MacKenzie turns to other aspects of finance in subsequent chapters: measuring profit, constructing emissions markets. Finally, he concludes by reaffirming that he has attempted to open "the black boxes of finance" (p.177).

Overall, I found this to be a valuable book for examining finance, and a nice proof of concept in terms of applying ANT more broadly. On the other hand, it didn't develop ANT theoretically or present any surprises or development beyond those in the cases themselves. I think these limitations suggest that the book was meant for those interested in finance rather than in ANT more generally. In any case, I'm still glad I read it, and I'd recommend it to those who are interested in applying ANT to other domains.

Reading :: Prince of Networks

Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics
By Graham Harman

I came upon Prince of Networks through a reference from Tom Haskins' blog; he credited it as liberating him from some double binds in understanding actor-network theory (ANT). Many thanks to Tom for pointing out this book, which is quite good.

Prince of Networks is a philosopher's understanding of Latour's body of work. Specifically, Harman is trying to introduce Latour as "a key figure in metaphysics" (p.5). And he thinks it's about time:

The central problem of metaphysics is the interplay of objects and relations, and Latour sheds more light on both problems than perhaps any other contemporary thinker. It is odd that no one so far has seemed to realize this - bad luck for Latour, but once-in-a-lifetime good fortune for me, as the author of the first book on his metaphysics. (p.159)

Harman divides this once-in-a-lifetime book into two parts. Part I examines Latour's key works - particularly Irreductions, Science in Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Pandora's Hope, after which he names these chapters - in terms of metaphysics, comparing these key works to parallel work in metaphysics. In Part II, he examines Latour's take on objects and relations more critically, drawing Latour's thought into a more critical dialogue with metaphysics.

Unlike Harman and (evidently) Latour, I don't have a grounding in metaphysics, so the second part was of quite limited value to me. But the first part was useful because I was able to see how Harman explains Latour's thought to himself and fellow metaphysicists, and thus was able to see how ANT's concepts circulated into other disciplinary dialogues.

Harman starts with Irreductions, a relatively short treatise that is typically appended to Latour's The Pasteurization of France. Here, Latour describes a 1972 epiphany on the road from Dijon to Gray, in which he realizes that "nothing can be reduced to anything else, nothing can be deduced from anything else, everything must be allied to everything else" (p.13, quoting Latour p.163). This assertion became a "new principle of philosophy" for Latour (p.13), a principle that led to four premises: "the world is made up of actors or actants"; "no object is inherently reducible or irreducible to any other"; "the means of linking one thing to another is translation"; "actants gain in strength only through their alliances" (pp.14-15). Latour also "rejects the rift between an inner substance and its trivial exterior" (p.17). And the concept of alliance, Harman says, doesn't mean that Latour is Machiavellian: he doesn't reduce truth to human power games, he accepts nonhumans as actors and measures reality in terms of how connected an actor is (p.19). Importantly, "any attempt to see actants as the reducible puppets of deeper structures is doomed to fail" in this understanding (p.21).

Harman moves next to Science in Action, which introduces the concepts of black boxes and action at a distance (p.33). Latour, Harman asserts, is not a philosopher of science so much as "a metaphysician working in a philosopher-of-science idiom" (p.36). In this idiom, Latour chooses to open certain "black boxes" - that is, to examine specific objects as performances rather than substances (p.44).

In the next book Harman examines, We Have Never Been Modern, Latour tackles modernism and critiques how it turns quotidian, fragile actants into abstract nominalizations: "capitalism, imperialism, science, technology, domination" (p.62, quoting Latour pp.125-126). Harman becomes very enthusiastic about such critiques, and even proposes that "Although in my view (but not Latour's) Heidegger is the greatest philosopher of the past century, there are certainly moments when he deserves to have his tyres slashed" (p.68).

Moving along, Harman next discusses Pandora's Hope. And here he begins to critique Latour more directly, particularly in Latour's handling of Plato's Gorgias. In Latour's reading, although Socrates and Callicles are nominally at odds, they have a common enemy: the crowds (p.86). Harman, however, thinks that although this critique has some merit, Socrates is really the open-minded and questioning fellow that he portrays himself as being, and in this sense Socrates is "the ally of Latourean metaphysics" (p.91). (Although I'm no metaphysician, I don't buy this argument.)

The second part of the book was, frankly, less interesting to me because it deals with a lengthy comparison and critique of Latour with various metaphysicians. I agree with Harman that "Latour ... cannot explain change" (p.130) - more precisely, ANT has no strong account of development (see my book Network). But I disagree with Harman's understanding of Latorean relationships, which he seems to interpret as componentization:

But Latour's philosophy does not even allow for the existence of microparticles due to the infinite regress implied by the principle that black boxes can always be opened. Hence, it is all the more important for Latour that he allow genuine non-relational reality to emerge at each level of the world. And though he never passes the buck of reality downward to an artificial stopping point in the purported final kingdom of quarks, he does pass it upward to the outward effects an actant has on its neighbors. But the buck must never be passed in either direction. The reality of an object belongs to that object - not to its tiny internal constituents, and also not to the larger collectives in which it is immersed. (p.163)

If I'm reading Harman right, he's taking the metaphor of the black box too literally here, as many tend to do. If you imagine yourself opening a literal box, you'll find only things that fit inside that box - smaller things. If you dismantle a machine, you get the components of that machine. But Latour's concept of the black box isn't that of components but the associations from which the black box is composed. If I opened my phone, I'd find components; but if I "opened" it as a Latourean black box, I'd find Google and Taiwan. When Latour does talk of tiny components, it's in the context of comparing them: for instance, in "Drawing Things Together," he emphasizes that whether we examine microparticles or galaxies, we tend to view representations that are physically the same size, about the size of a piece of typing paper. In Latour's conception, the world doesn't have "levels"; the world is flat.

In any case, despite my misgivings over a couple of points in Part II, I thought this book was a keeper. It's certainly worth reading if you're interested in Latour or in metaphysics.

Coworking in Austin: LINK Coworking opens in October

If you've been following this blog or you saw my SXSWi2010 panel, you may remember Liz Elam's project Link Coworking. Liz has been looking for the right spot, under the right conditions, for opening her coworking space. And now she reports that she has found it:

It’s official! I have signed a lease at the Village Shopping Center (Anderson Lane – Home of Cover 3, Alamo, Body Business, Madam Mam’s, Chipotle etc. etc.). Link Coworking will open in the September timeframe with a grand opening bash in October.

The Village Shopping Center is a great space: on the north side of Anderson between Mopac and Burnet, within walking space of great restaurants, a gym, a sports bar, a movie theater, and etc. It's nicely located in north Austin. In fact, it's not too far from Cospace, which is on the east end of Anderson.

Liz says Link Coworking will open in mid-October. Congratulations to Liz, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the doors finally open!

Reading :: A Theory of Power

A Theory of Power
By Jeff Vail

I don't remember exactly how I got to Jeff Vail's blog - probably one of those Google chains that started with Ronfeldt's work on TIMN - but I was intrigued by his use of Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome concept to develop ideas about nonhierarchical organization and resilient communities. Based on the blog, I ordered Vail's book A Theory of Power.

This slim (50pp excluding references) monograph is quirky in many ways. For instance, it's written in English Prime (p.1, footnote 1), and thus includes no "be" verbs except in quotations. More broadly, it's iconoclastic enough to be described as "anarchist theory" - and to be endorsed by anarchist theorists. Two endorsement quotes grace the back cover: anarchist philosopher John Zerzan calls it "rich, stimulating, and ambitious," while Noam Chomsky, simply declares it "fascinating."

Personally, I found it fascinating too, but I'm afraid I was not persuaded by it. Vail makes an unusual argument that is made more unusual because it uses the concept of rhizome in a way that I think directly opposes Deleuze and Guattari's intention. If you've read my review of A Thousand Plateaus and my book Network, you might have some inkling of how startling it is to read Vail's declaration that he'll use the rhizome concept to "illuminate the fundamental clockwork of our minds, bodies, and societies, revealing principles of power-relationships that govern all aspects of what we perceive as reality, from the environment and economics to politics and psychology. It will unravel the bonds that hold humanity in slavery to the patterns of history - and ultimately provide the key to our freedom" (p.3). Vail reads A Thousand Plateaus and sees a foundationalist account of reality. This foundationalist account, like Engels' version of dialectics, characterizes the whole of reality: "The same concept of power-relationships that defines sub-atomic structure also seems to define the larger world we live in - ecologies, societies, and economies. It acts like opening a watch to reveal the works inside" (p.5).

Vail contrasts two "fundamental methods of organization," which are "hierarchy and rhizome" (p.7). And in contrast to Deleuze and Guattari's caution that a rhizome is an antigenealogy and an antimemory (see D&G p.11, 21), Vail takes "a developmental, historical approach in the deconstruction of our world" (p.8). His Chapter 3 provides a brief history of the world, drawn primarily from Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (which I haven't read). Here, the argument goes something like this: The gene uses organisms to reproduce itself; we organisms are the junior partner in this power relationship, then, controlled by the gene (p.9), evolving in order to ensure the gene's survival. Group entities, or cultures, are meta-individuals - but here, following Dawkins, Vail says that the controlling power is the meme, "the cultural equivalent of the gene" (p.11). And just as genes control organisms to ensure their self-reproduction, memes control cultures to ensure their own replication (p.11). Genes and memes coevolve, but memes are more rapid, flexible, and adaptable; nevertheless, memes interact strongly with genes, triggering genetic functions (p.12). (Although Vail doesn't use the term, the relationship sounds quite dialectic in an Engelsian sense.)

With writing, memes could expand "beyond the linguistic confines of their human host" (p.16). Vail cautions: "We must not, however, forget that memes do not serve humanity - rather, they use us for their propagation" (p.16).

(An aside here: Neal Stephenson brilliantly uses a version of this scenario in his book Snow Crash. But that book is dystopian science fiction.)

In Vail's account, the evolution of memes led to agriculture, which "ended the genetic evolution of humanity as it existed for millions of years, and finally completed the transition of power over human action from the gene to the meme" (p.19). In agriculture, the meme controls food production and therefore the individual (p.20). Under agriculture, evolution switched from individual to group selection, and "the makeup of our genome froze in the Pleistocene era of hunter-gatherers" (p.21). Technologies, as memes, also "follow a hard-wired path" of "selfish interest" (p.30) - and here Vail tries to be radically symmetrical, but comes across as a technological determinist.

At this point, Vail argues: "The understanding that self-awareness exists to serve the meme breaks that bond of servitude - it acts as the realization of enlightenment. Reread that last sentence," he orders. Have you done that? Great. From a theoretical standpoint, I am extremely dubious. But the good news is that this is the turning point of the monograph, because Vail turns from overarching (and arboreal, in the Deleuzean sense) theory to the more practical question of constructing resilient communities via networked organization.

Vail forges on to describe an alternate arrangement: "The path to stability and sustainability in human society lies in the conscious manipulation of memetic control structures" (p.40), and here he turns to the rhizome, which is hierarchy's "opposite" (p.40). According to Vail, "Rhizome acts as a web-like structure of connected but independent nodes, borrowing its name from the structures of bamboo and other grasses" (p.41). It is incompatible with hierarchy (p.41). (And here, when Vail says "rhizome," I hear "network" in the Ronfeldtian sense.) At the same time, Vail declares that "Rhizome structure has no inherent instability, but it will quickly reorder into hierarchy if we do not address the institutions within our society that serve to perpetrate hierarchy" (p.41). He goes on to discuss rhizomes as the basis for what John Robb would call resilient communities.

At this later, less theoretically ambitious portion of the monograph, Vail is actually describing a particular kind of networked organization. And here, if we set aside the Snow Crash style historical narrative, we can realize some gains. Vail draws on diverse examples to describe how a "rhizomatic" (networked) community focused on individual empowerment might look. The result is a cross of John Robb's resilient communities, Bobbitt's entrepreneurial market-state, and vintage Heinlein. Then again, I think Arquilla and Ronfeldt's work does a much better job of examining the same sort of phenomenon in more qualified, better theorized ways.

In sum, I found this to be a very strange monograph. Like Chomsky, I would call it "fascinating," but not in a wholly positive sense. I regret that I can't recommend it to the casual reader, but those who are interested in anarchist theory or resilient communities may want to pick it up.

Reading :: The Work of Nations

The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism
By Robert B. Reich

So I've been meaning to read this book for over ten years, ever since Johndan Johnson-Eilola first started referring to it. Published in 1991, this book is written for a general audience and attempts to explain "a transformation that will rearrange the politics and economics of the coming century. There will be no national products or technologies, no national corporations, no national industries. There will no longer be national economies, at least as we have come to understand that concept. All that will remain rooted within national borders are the people who comprise a nation" (p.3). That is, Reich is addressing the issue of globalization, of hollow nation-states (Castells et al), of post-capitalist society (Drucker), of the support economy (Zuboff and Maxmin), of the market-state (Bobbitt), of power shifts (Toffler), of asymmetry (Arquilla and Ronfeldt), of creatives (Florida).

If I had read this book in 1991, it would have been a revelation (although admittedly it would be less of a revelation if I had read Toffler's books up to that point). Reading it now, though, I find few additional insights that haven't been covered by the books above, and the book is more popularly written than even Toffler's books.

On the other hand, Reich's evaluation is different from those of the other authors. Reich concludes that the US' real challenge is "to increase the potential value of what its citizens can add to the global economy, by enhancing their skills and capabilities and by improving their means of linking those skills and capacities to the world market" (p.8). In doing so, Reich wonders less about the US economy than its society, and he wonders, "are we still a society, even if we are no longer an economy?" (p.9). Can we rescue the nation-state?

For Bobbitt, the answer was no, and that was fine because other state configurations wait in the wings. For Reich, the answer is yes, partially (I think) because he doesn't envision a state that's not a nation-state. To answer this question affirmatively, Reich takes us through an accessible history of the 20th century, focusing on the tacit bargain that the US struck with its national champions, the corporations. Yet as corporations became more internationally connected, began outsourcing to take advantage of cheap labor and localized competencies, and began taking advantages of differences in local economic and regulatory conditions, that bargain fell apart; corporations "are ceasing to exist in any form that can meaningfully be distinguished from the rest of the global economy" (p.77); and the standard of living for any country's citizens suddenly depends, not on the success of core corporations and industries, but on "the worldwide demand for [citizens'] skills and insights" (p.77).

Like Castells and Drucker, Reich sees corporations turning to "serving the unique needs of particular customers" (p.82), achieving high-value as well as high-volume production. Such high-value businesses focus on three skills: problem-solving skills, skills to help customers understand needs, and skills that link problem-solvers and problem-identifiers (p.84). The distinction between goods and services means less and less (p.85). And given this shift, bureaucracies make less and less sense (pp.87-88; cf. Toffler's adhocracies). Reich describes the new enterprise as a "web" (looking more like Burt's brokered "neighbor networks" than all-channel networks; p.89). Non-core standardized pieces, including temporary labor, are acquired as needed (p.90; cf. Toffler's adhocracies, but also Castells' generic labor). And because enterprises are arranged in this way, Reich argues, official statistics aree hard to interpret (p.94). For instance, we've seen a rise in self-employment figures, but Reich argues that these self-employed people are generally not taking replacement jobs, they're becoming autonomous nodes in enterprise webs (p.95). "There is no 'inside' or 'outside' the corporation, but only different distances from its strategic center," Reich states, offering the example of a deregulated AT&T (p.96).

Given these changes, Reich argues that "The key assets of high-value enterprise are not tangible things, but the skills involved in linking solutions to particular needs, and the reputations that come from having done so successfully in the past" (p.98). Ownership and power are diffused (p.98). Creatives can't be bought or acquired, only enticed (p.103; cf. Florida).

Globally, high-value enterprises resist top-down control and centralized ownership (p.110). The many digital and telecommunications technologies constitute the "threads" that make up the "global web" and make national control over information flows futile (p.111). Increasingly, the "global web" carries most of what is traded between nations: problem-solving, problem-identifying, brokerage between these, and routine components and services (p.113).

Later in the book, Reich breaks down the "three jobs of the future": routine production services, in-person services, and symbolic-analytic work (p.174). The first are routine, step-by-step, repeatable (p.174); Castells terms these "generic labor." Those who perform these jobs are in competition with workers and automated labor globally; their wages will fall. The second set are marginally more protected, since in-person services can't be outsourced, but their wages are also sinking. The third, according to Reich, are the truly competitive jobs, and their wages will rise. Symbolic-analytic workers work alone or in small teams; teamwork is crucial; they must have frequent and informal conversations; they are partners and associates rather than under bosses or supervisors (pp.178-179). They comprised only 8% of the workforce in the 1950s, but 20% in the 1990s (p.179). In the new economy, their job is not to know things, but to use that knowledge (p.182). Fortunately for us (the US), Reich says, no nation educates its symbolic-analytic workers as well as the US (p.225), and nowhere else is there such an agglomeration of them (p.226).

But, and this brings us back to Reich's question at the beginning of the book, can we save US society? After all, he says, symbolic-analytic workers are seceding from society (Ch.20-21). Alas, Reich ends with hope of a solution rather than an actual solution.

So was The Work of Nations worth it for me? I think it was. Although other readings cover almost all of this ground, and in frequently more sophisticated ways, Reich's piece is relatively early and provides a panoramic view of the shift toward a knowledge society. If that sounds interesting to you, pick it up.

n.b., When I refer to other books I've reviewed on this blog, I usually insert links. Today, that seems like too much work. But don't hesitate to search for any of the names above if the books sound intriguing.

Reading :: Digital Literacy for Technical Communication

Digital Literacy for Technical Communication: 21st Century Theory and Practice
Edited by Rachel Spilka

When I was in high school, I'd spend some of my yard work money on classic rock albums. But I wasn't exactly swimming in money, so I'd try to buy albums strategically. After all, plenty of albums have one or two hit songs, but the rest of the tracks were unremarkable at best and filler at worst. So as an austerity measure, I limited myself to albums that had at least three songs I recognized and liked. Led Zeppelin IV?Dark Side of the Moon? Sure, buy. American Pie? Nope.

I have more money now, but less time, so I find myself doing similar calculations. If you read this blog regularly, you know that I prefer single-author books to edited collections: they tend to be more coherent and vary less in quality. But then again, sometimes a good author and a good topic make it worth picking up the collection. That's the case with Rachel Spilka's new collection, Digital Literacy for Technical Communication - at least if you're interested in technical communication. This book addresses the question of how the field of technical communication is changing due to the influx of new digital technologies and how our theories and practices must continue developing to keep up. And I'm happy to report that it has some solid chapters.

Let's look at some of these. First up is Saul Carliner's "Computers and Technical Communication in the 21st Century." Carliner traces changes in technical communicators' work at a large (unnamed) computer manufacturer that has traditionally employed large numbers of technical communicators (p.22). And although Carliner discusses these changes in detail, you'll want to keep your finger on p.22 and turn to pp.24-25, where Carliner examines four stages - late 1970s, mid-to-late 1980s, late 1990s-early 2000s, and early 2000s-now - in terms of primary products, titles, qualifications, primary job responsibilities, and primary means of production. The bottom line is that technical communication has changed radically across all these dimensions. Carliner concludes that in this latest stage, "those who develop and produce content have been facing dwindling work opportunities" due partly to offshoring and content management systems (p.44). Carliner smartly draws implications for work processes, information reuse, and academic programs (pp.45-47).

Along the same lines, R. Stanley Dicks' chapter "The Effects of Digital Literacy on the Nature of Technical Communication Work" describes "the rapid and intense increase in digital literacy" as pushing causing a "seismic shift" in technical communication (p.51). Dicks emphasizes corresponding changes in management philosophy, related to economics, management, and methodologies (p.52). In terms of economics, Dicks reviews the shift toward knowledge work, drawing on Reich (and Johnson-Eilola's work referencing Reich) (p.53), then moving to a summary of Zuboff and Maxmin's The Support Economy (p.55-59). In terms of management, Dicks identifies ways for communicators to show management how they add value: through cost reduction, cost avoidance, revenue enhancement, and intangible contributions (p.61). Finally, in terms of methodologies, Dicks discusses relatively new practices such as single-sourcing, agile development methods, user-centered design, iterative design, extreme programming, scrum, distributed work, and web 2.0 (pp.68-75). Dicks wraps up by discussing education that can address these emerging aspects of technical communication.

Dave Clark's "Shaped and Shaping Tools" examines technical communication technologies in rhetorical terms. As Clark points out, the rhetoric of technology is ill-defined, and we need a solid definition in order to better understand how technical communicators work with their tools rhetorically. Arguing strongly that the rhetoric of technology is not the rhetoric of science (pp.89-90), he draws on Dorothy Winsor's work to make that case, then proceeds to examine how tech comm scholars have conducted rhetoric-of-technology studies (pp.91-92). Clark tackles these under four (nonexhaustive) headings: rhetorical analysis; technology transfer and diffusion; genre theory; and activity theory. Clark concludes by emphasizing what the approaches share: "Understanding [technologies'] contexts is critical to developing a deeper understanding of technologies that can lead to their more effective use" (p.100).

William Hart-Davidson's "Content Management: Beyond Single-Sourcing" focuses on a specific area that Carliner and Dicks both mentioned (and that Clark has addressed in other publications). The chapter is well done, but turn to the table on p.136 for an overview of "technical communicators' expanding roles and responsibilities in the context of an organization's content strategy" (p.136). Think of this table as an exploded view of the last column in Carliner's table, a detailed view of aspects of Dicks' chapter, and to some extent a rhetorical understanding of technology along the lines introduced in Clark's chapter. Nice work here.

Other chapters are also worthwhile. Just to name-check two: Bernadette Longo's "Human + Machine Culture" attempts to draw connections between activity theory and cultural theory, while Barry Thatcher's "Understanding Digital Literacy Across Cultures" examines how digital technologies complicate intercultural communication.

Bottom line? I'm not sure Digital Literacy for Technical Communication is a Led Zeppelin IV, but it's no one-hit wonder either. It has some solid and surprisingly integrated pieces that represent smart thinking about how technical communication is developing. If you're interested in tech comm, I'd definitely recommend picking it up.

Reading :: A Research Primer for Technical Communication

A Research Primer for Technical Communication: Methods, Exemplars, and Analyses
By Michael A. Hughes and George F. Hayhoe

Just a quick review today. This book is pretty slim for a research primer - 216pp, a chunk of which represent reprinted articles from Technical Communication, the journal of the STC - and is written for technical communication students and practitioners who are new to empirical research. Although the book doesn't specify what level of student, I could see my juniors and seniors mowing through the book with no difficulty.

The book is consistently clear throughout, carefully classifying different types of research goals and their foci (p.7) as well as research methods and their descriptions (p.11), then elaborating on each. For most sections, the authors include exercises, such as the exercise on p.12 that has readers match methods with descriptions of specific cases. I'm actually quite impressed with how the authors describe many concepts, such as triangulation and informed consent, lucidly yet with considerable economy.

The book is fairly elementary, probably too elementary for most graduate students in technical communication programs. But I could see it being used in undergraduate courses, perhaps even down to the sophomore level, and certainly by practitioners. If you're looking for a general research methods book at that level, take a look.

TIMN and Bobbitt's Market-State

I recently blogged a review of Phillip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles, an impressive discussion of how the State has changed over time and how it might change in the future. This book reminded me a lot of David Ronfeldt's TIMN framework, and I think there's a lot of overlap in terms of how we've experienced changes in organization, in logics, and in assumptions or warrants that underpin our understanding of how we interact with the State and each other.

There are, of course, differences as well. Ronfeldt recently blogged thoughts on how TIMN and Bobbitt's market-state compare. (He intends to also write on Phillip Blond’s "civic state" and Michel Bauwens’s "partner state.") As always, Ronfeldt's post is thoughtful and showcases Ronfeldt's much, much deeper understanding of the issues involved with these sorts of frameworks. If you're interested in political ideology, or if my discussions of TIMN or Bobbitt (or netwar or John Robb or Castells or the health care town halls or loose work organization or ...) have piqued your interest, I highly recommend clicking through.

In the pipeline

The end of the semester is a terrible time for blogging book reviews, but I will be blogging these two soon:

• Spilka, Digital Literacy for Technical Communication
• Hughes & Hayhoe, A Research Primer for Technical Communication

And I plan on reading these books soon:

• Reich, The Work of Nations
• (possibly) Reich, The Future of Success
• Losh, Virtualpolitik

That is, if I can get through this semester. Keep your fingers crossed and watch this space.

David Lee visits RHE 330c

Today, David Lee, who designs user experiences for FG Squared, visited my Designing Text Ecologies class. I'm glad he did: He covered the UX process in general, describing client meetings, persona development, user stories, user interaction diagrams, card sorting, paper prototyping, wireframes, and user interface flows.

David was my student in a previous RHE 330c, which at that time was a course on contextual design. I didn't know this, but apparently my class was a turning point for him: he came in as a Flash programmer, and exited as a budding UX designer. The new line of work was more interesting to him, but it also boosted his salary by 20%. UX is a big deal now, he told us, and he was kind enough to describe a case study.

I was especially interested in how he moves from paper prototyping to wireframes, then to rapid prototypes (clickable wireframes). He also interacts with graphic designers at this point, handing the wireframes off for visual refining.

David gave me permission to post his slide deck here. It's a nice introduction to the UX process with several of its techniques.

David Lee's UX presentation for my RHE 330c class

View more presentations from spinuzzi.

Designing Text Ecologies, Summer 2010

Are you a student at UT, looking for a summer course? I'm teaching one. Here's a very brief description:

Organizations use all sorts of texts. They don’t always go together. But somehow they usually work together anyway, in complex ecologies.

Sometimes they don’t.

If you go into an organization, watch people work, talk to them, and take pictures, you can find out why. Model the problems. And then fix them.

That’s what my summer class is about.

RHE 330c: Designing Text Ecologies (Unique ID 87500)

Summer 2010

M-F 10-11:30

I'm always enthusiastic about the classes I teach, but that's especially true for this one. Students learn to design and conduct basic field research, use powerful analytical techniques to systematically study how organizations circulate texts and knowledge, and intervene to fine-tune or at least improve the system. I've been teaching variations of this course since 2001. If you're a UT undergrad looking for a summer course, and this description seems even remotely interesting, drop me a line and I'll be happy to discuss it.

For a more detailed idea of what we'll do there, see my spring class and the course's resource site. And don't hesitate to email me with questions.

Outsourcing grading

Just a quick post to link to a Chronicle of Higher Education article about outsourcing grading.

Some may remember a similarly controversial topic from 2006, based on a Chronicle article on how Texas Tech's writing program handled online grading.

Online grading like TTU's - and distance education classes, for that matter - have prepared people to be more receptive to the idea of outsourcing or offshoring grading. (To a lesser extent, so has the practice of accepting first-year composition credits from community colleges.) Slowly, education follows the lead of other industries, segmenting specializations and seeking to maximize self-programmable labor while automating or outsourcing generic labor.

Higher education has been insulated to some degree from this trend. But radical tuition increases, budget crunches, and the looming crisis in underfunded pensions will tend to lead stakeholders to consider less expensive solutions. Nobody will think these solutions are perfect, but I expect a lot more "satisficing" than we're used to seeing. Especially in expensive-to-run classes such as those with small class sizes.

The obvious counterargument, of course, is that grading in writing classes is not generic labor: it's problem-solving, it's grounded in particular contexts, it's sensitive to particular students' needs and developments. Sure, of course, I agree. But as a field, we're going to have to start articulating clearly, for outside audiences, what the vital contribution of instructor grading is. Not the preferred contribution, not the best-practices contribution, but the contribution that can't be made otherwise and that is critical to the university's mission. We need to argue that grading can't be made generic.

Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society

I've just been alerted to Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society. It sounds interesting:

Present Tense is currently seeking submissions for its inaugural issue. We are a peer-reviewed, blind-refereed, online journal dedicated to exploring contemporary social, cultural, political and economic issues through a rhetorical lens.

Seeking to address current or presently unfolding issues, we publish short articles of no more than 2,000 words, the length of a conference paper. We also encourage conference-length multimedia submissions such as short documentaries, flash videos, interviews and podcasts, as well as reviews that are thematically related to the goals of the journal.

If you're sitting on a manuscript along these lines, take a look and see what you think.

Coworking in Round Rock: A Conversation with Will Hampton, Director of Communication, City of Round Rock

After my SXSWi2010 panel "What Coworking Tells Us About the Future of Work," Will Hampton approached me and suggested we chat sometime about the City of Round Rock's efforts in this direction. I had heard something about these efforts, and was especially interested in looking at a coworking model in which local government was involved, so I was happy to take Will up on the offer.

So, on Monday, I drove up quite early to beat the traffic, parking near City Hall. Since I was early, I grabbed a coffee and some breakfast tacos at Star Co, which has a great location on E. Main Street and turns out to be a nice place to get some work done. (More on this later.) At the appointed time, I walked across the street and met Will at City Hall.

City Hall is one street over from E. Main Street, but it backs up to a building directly on E. Main. This building was purchased by the City a year ago and has just been renovated, Will told me, and much of it will go toward expanding the City's offices, housing the Visitors' Bureau, and hosting an art space. But some of the building has not been programmed yet -- and Will sees a potential for a coworking space.

Why a coworking space here? Will saw a presentation on coworking at SXSWi2009, moderated by Tony Bacigalupo and featuring site owners from Caroline Collective (Houston), Indy Hall (Philadelphia), Office Nomads (Seattle), and Souk (Portland). And he saw the potential for a coworking space to attract the Creative Class to Main Street, helping to revitalize the core of Round Rock. After all, he thought in 2009, "we have this building we just bought." And a coworking community has already started in Round Rock - a Jelly, which has been held at Star Co for just over a year. The Jelly draws an eclectic mix of people, heavy on the tech crowd, particularly people who have been recently laid off by large tech companies. But the community also includes a freelance photographer and a writer. (He quotes one Jelly member as saying that Jelly changed his life by helping him to focus and to network.)

Others have also seen the potential. For instance, he says that the Williamson County Entrepreneurs Network has also shown interest.

So right now, Will has identified two options for opening a Round Rock coworking space. Both would be initiatives in which the City would attract and facilitate a coworking facility -- but the City is not itself going to go into the coworking business. The two options are (1) to open a coworking space in the City's new building, in currently unprogrammed rooms, and (2) to open a space in a nearby building for lease.

Option 1: Coworking in the City's Building

As I mentioned above, Will says that two open-plan rooms have not yet been programmed, and he sees them as potential coworking spaces. Both are on the second floor, and both have lots of natural light from windows facing E. Main Street. The first is a 1600 square foot space, a large rectangle:

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

The second is approximately 1200 square feet and is a more irregular shape, with windows facing a public green:

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

Both are just a short flight of stairs from a potential 800 square foot conference room, suitable for client meetings and presentations, with windows overlooking the green:

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

From Coworking: City of Round Rock

This conference room is just across the hall from the arts space, which will feature local artists and juried competitions, with receptions planned on the green. The green, Will says, would also be a great place for the farmer's market -- which currently meets nearby in the parking garage. The arts space will open in early May.

In considering this option, the City sees the potential of leasing coworking space to an established operator at a reasonable rate. The idea is to pull the Creative Class to downtown Round Rock, keeping local businesspeople who currently commute to Austin or work out of their houses. "I'm interested in activating downtown," Will told me more than once.

On the other hand, Will tells me, the City might need the extra space as flex space. So that brings us to Option 2.

Option 2: Coworking on Main Street

Option 2 is a building for lease just two blocks from the city building. The space is very different from Option 1: It hasn't been renovated yet, the building is older, and the space is essentially a long hallway with a succession of small rooms. Rather than trying to photograph each of these, I took a video with my phone. Apologies for the quality.

As you can see, this space is quite different, and the warren of small rooms is less conducive to the open-plan sort of coworking I've seen at Cospace and Conjunctured. Also, it strikes me as I watch the video that there are no windows. But the space could be suitable for an incubator, and I suggested that Star Co (just across the street) could serve as an extension of the space for open-plan coworking.

In this case, the City's role would be more as a facilitator or connector. The City doesn't plan to buy or lease the space or to compete with the private sector. But it does want to engage in "placemaking," in creating a "third space" that would be attractive to Creative Class workers.

At this point we moved to Star Co, which is, as I said, a very nice place to work. The back room was already starting to fill with people, working singly on laptops or clustered in twos and threes, getting business done. We grabbed a table and chatted about the community's long-term vision for Main Street. As project manager for the Downtown Master Plan, Will is invested in making this vision a reality.

That vision, Will told me, was of a denser urban space that was more attractive to the Creative Class. Along with other plans (creating a larger town green, reconfiguring a busy street), coworking could support a downtown with a "more organic feel," a downtown that is more "funky" and vital. Coworking could be a differentiator for Round Rock, separating it from Cedar Park and Pflugerville, and make "good business sense for the city."

Thoughts

I've seen several different models of coworking, some in Austin, some on the Coworking Google Group: as a loss leader, as a nonprofit or not-for-profit, as a for-profit business, as a way for existing businesses to recover excess building capacity, as a service provided by incubators, as a center supported by business development grants. When I first heard of Round Rock's efforts, I thought they would fit that last model. But I was impressed by the community's vision and the fact that it involved public-private partnerships that are heavy on private initiative: The City isn't trying to shoulder the burden of starting a coworking space, it's trying to attract a space that will support itself while supporting the City's vision.

The question that occurred to me as I toured the spaces, though, was: Are these the right spaces? Do they offer the right mix of open-plan, conference, and private spaces? Can people make phone calls, conduct presentations, isolate themselves when needed, but still network and bat around ideas when needed? Right now, without furniture and without renovation of Option 2, it's hard to tell.

On the other hand, as I remarked to Will at Star Co, Main Street could function as a larger ecosystem that could make up for the limitations of the individual spaces. For instance, I could imagine coworkers working in Option 2 when they needed to place phone calls, collaborate closely on a project, or take a client meeting; trip over to Star Co when they wanted to do some open-plan coworking; and take a break on the Green or in the art space. Similarly, I could see coworkers doing open-plan coworking in Option 1 and conducting meetings downstairs - although I'm not sure where they could take private phone calls. (Maybe in booths.)

In any case, I see a lot of potential in this effort. If you're thinking about starting a coworking space, do think about sending Will an email.

Reading :: Building Web Reputation Systems

Building Web Reputation Systems
By F. Randall Farmer and Bryce Glass

Some time ago, an acquaintance in the Austin tech industry, Ian Strain-Seymour (@ifss on Twitter) suggested I begin Twitter-following a fellow he knew in graduate school, Bryce Glass (@soldierant), who was then working for Yahoo. So I did, based on that recommendation. Soon I realized that Bryce knew my frequent collaborator Bill Hart-Davidson (@billhd). At some point I mentioned to Bryce that I knew both of these guys, and he followed me back. Like me, Bryce doesn't follow that many people, but we both made the decision to follow each other based on what our trusted friends thought - that is, on each others' reputations.

Reputation is a critical factor in making web services worthwhile, since it allows us to make decisions we wouldn't otherwise be able to make and to accrue social capital we wouldn't otherwise be able to accrue - whether we're talking about goods (think Amazon.com's reviews), services (Yelp), or social networking (Twitter). And in the absence of more durable connections, when we need to develop swift trust, we look for different ways to judge the authority and ethos of the people with whom we connect. Bryce and his coauthor, F. Randall Farmer, tell us how to do this systematically.

I've blogged before about how Farmer and Glass handle reputation in terms of ethos claims, so I won't repeat that work here. Suffice it to say that although the authors are not rhetoricians, rhetoricians should read this book. Rhetoricians will recognize a claims structure that looks a lot like Toulmin's (see Ch.2), but is fitted for digital literacy and its many ephemeral, distributed connections. They'll learn a lot from the book's descriptions and case studies about what ethos looks like in digital environments -- and how to fine-tune reputation systems to keep them healthy, productive, accurate, and aligned with the purpose of the community.

The book not only covers vital ground, it also covers that ground gracefully: the book is highly readable and is full of useful examples and diagrams. Although some parts assume some basic knowledge of system design, readers shouldn't have trouble getting through the rest of the book or gathering the core messages.

Disclosure: I reviewed this book in manuscript form. And yes, I was smitten with it then too.

If you're a rhetorician who is trying to understand claims and ethos in digital literacy, this book is a must. If you're a rhetorician of any stripe, you still might want to pick it up. Highly recommended.

The Coworking Book

Alex Hillman of IndyHall has begun a book (really, a curated project in the form of a wiki) about coworking. It only has one short chapter right now, so if you're in the coworking community, feel free to contribute.

Reading :: Traditions of Writing Research

Traditions of Writing Research
Edited by Charles Bazerman, Robert Krut, Karen Lunsford, Susan McLeod, Suzie Null, Paul Rogers, and Amanda Stansell

In 2008, I attended the Writing Research Across Borders conference in Santa Barbara. It's an international conference, and I was very happy to make it and to see presentations from colleagues across the world. (I'll be going to WRAB 2011 in February.) The research was of high quality, the perspectives were many, and I gained insights into writing research in many different milieux.

This book features some of the best papers of that conference. Mine isn't in it - I presented on themes from my second book, which was in press, so I didn't submit the paper - but the book is full of short but solid pieces. It reminds me of some of the best conference proceedings I've seen in other fields (and made me wish that we had more conferences with proceedings in our own field). Like good conference proceedings, this book's short chapters hold well-developed and methodologically sound cases. Like good scholarly collections, the book relates these chapters well in thematic sections. It's like a scholarly tapas bar.

In this collection, you'll find studies on writing from China, France, Norway, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Armenia, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, Australia, Canada, and the US. One chapter even examines how Chinese and Moroccan immigrants learn a Romance language in Catalan. US contributions are a large minority, but still a minority here. Studies ranged in methodology from ethnography to case study to discourse and text analysis to surveys, and involved both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

With a range that large, it's hard to pick out some standouts, but I'll try.

I really enjoyed the first chapter, Huijun's "Modern 'Writingology' in China," which chronicles how the Chinese approach to writing developed from the vernacular movement in the 1910s, through the Revolution and its Soviet-influenced approaches, to the more recent approaches influenced by the emerging market economy.

Speaking of the Soviets, I was touched by Cezar Ornatowski's "Writing, From Stalinism to Democracy: Literacy Education and Politics in Poland, 1945-1999." Ornatowski notes how ideologically centralized writing instruction was, including how it taught the genre of the "life story" as an ideological confession that students repeatedly had to write. Ornatowski takes us through the later transitions, showing how political changes were reflected in changes in writing instruction.

Maria Silvia Cintra's "The continuum illiterate-literate and the contrast between different ethnicities" describes a Brazilian ethnography about literacy. In the course of the ethnography, she examines the relationship between Bakhtin's discourse genres and Voloshinov's social psychology and ideology - two constructs that, she says, must be considered together (p.114).

Doreen Starke-Meyerring also takes up the topic of genres in "Between Peer Review and Peer Production," comparing academic peer review with wikis in terms of genre. Genres' dynamic structures are produced, she says, by internal conflicts between the residual cultural logic of their origins and the situations they must address (p.342).

Finally, in "Writing in multiple contexts," David R. Russell puts cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) in dialogue with Schutz's phenomonology. This move, he says, lets us take into account a theory of multiple contexts on "both the social-psychological (subjective and intersubjective) plane and the sociological (objective and institutional) plane" (p.353). "The network is the context," he tells us, describing how the neat triangles of activity theory describe messy networks (p.354). He neatly pins this discussion to Schutz's understanding of a tool as a "thing-in-order-to" (p.355), and compares Vygotsky's and Schutz's "shared understandings about thought and action, communication and contexts, and situations" (p.356).

Overall, a really solid collection. If you're interested in examples of writing research from different countries, activities, and contexts, I recommend it.

SXSWi: Interview with Amanda Congdon on coworking

For once, I was the interviewee. Thanks to Amanda and the SometimesDaily crew for this opportunity. They managed to edit my interview into something coherent - although I can't believe I pronounced the country "Bangalesh" :/

If coworking interests you, check out some of my interviews (text, not filmed) of coworking proprietors in the Austin area.

Update: Here's a pic a colleague snapped of me during the interview. Amanda had a two-person team, one with a camera on a tripod (to our left), the other one shooting the primary video on an SLR. I was impressed by how smoothly they worked together.

From Austin snapshots

Reading :: Building Social Web Applications

Building Social Web Applications: Establishing Community at the Heart of Your Site
By Gavin Bell

Gavin and I have been following each other on Twitter for a while (he's @zzgavin), partially because we both share an interest in social media and activity theory. Since he was in town last week for South by Southwest Interactive, I swung by and picked up a (signed) copy of his new book, an O'Reilly title on designing, building, and maintaining social web apps. It's quite good (and Gavin is a great guy in person).

The book is pitched toward people who are building social apps, who have an idea, but who may not have the experience to execute. So it takes us through topics as varied as building APIs, creating and managing community relationships, managing change, making choices about relationships and privacy, managing identities, understanding social network patterns, and organizing the site. Gavin draws on many examples from familiar sites, including Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed among others. These are tremendously useful.

For instance, I was struck by his example on p.72 of how Facebook initially rolled out its Mini-Feed in 2006: they had tested it internally, within a smaller, generally colocated group of coworkers (Facebook mployees), and had assumed that their experience would be identical to that of Facebook's general users. But FB's general users tended to friend people they didn't know - and suddenly the Mini-Feed made them feel exposed to all of these not-really-friends. Interestingly, as I read this story, I realized that I had just heard almost exactly the same story - from the GMail/Google Buzz group at their SXSWi panel. If only they had read this book!

Gavin draws on activity theory and actor-network theory to underpin his ideas on social web applications, although they are explained mostly in a sidebar on pp.94-95. He credits Jyri Engestrom, from whom he borrows the concept of social objects, but also points us to Kaptelinin and Nardi's excellent book. Activity theory isn't discussed in great detail - it's not that kind of book - but Gavin clearly thought about it a great deal as he thought through this book.

If you're thinking about launching a social web app, if you're teaching students about the same, or if you just want to better understand how these sites work, I highly recommend the book.