Author: Derek Mueller

When we first circulated the call for “[blank]-in-the-loop writing,” we were motivated by a deceptively simple question: what, exactly, belongs in the loop? The question emerged from ongoing, often polemic, conversations about generative AI and writing, but it was never intended to be limited to AI itself. Inspired by Alan Knowles’s work on rhetorical load sharing and by the increasingly complex ecologies in which contemporary writing unfolds, we invited contributors to explore the people, technologies, values, infrastructures, practices and possibilities that shape writing processes. Intuitively and empirically, we believed loops were refreshingly variable, idiosyncratic, and somehow also familiar. We hoped…

Acknowledgement We thank all contributors of the 14th Blog Carnival––Jim Brown, Amber Buck, Amelia Chesley, Sergio Figueiredo, Jennifer Juszkiewicz, Kim Lacey, Megan McIntyre, Derek Mueller, Scott Sundvall, and Sara West––for their perspectives and engaging discussion on the states of digital rhetorics. Just before the end of summer, we shared a CFP calling for critical reflections that would help update our understanding of digital rhetorics. We are excited to curate ten blog posts that have made plausible attempts to revisit digital rhetorics’ pasts, examine its current influence, and speculate possible futures. DRC’S First Blog Carnival In an effort to account for…

Considering the wide horizon of digital rhetorics’ fu-fu-futures, I have settled in this entry on a speculative question about availability. Classically, availability chimes to Aristotle’s “available means,” and while this phrase, available means, is fair weather for forecasting digital rhetorics ever-expanding operations, in a closely related sense, availability refers to operations more barometrically tempestuous, lesser predictable capacities for engagement, attentional and discursive and affective. In a 2018 RSQ article, “The Digital: Rhetoric Behind and Beyond the Screen,” Casey Boyle, Steph Ceraso, and Jim Brown introduce an emerging quality for digital rhetorics in the concept of transduction: “Transduction refers to how…

Call for Contributions to DRC Blog Carnival 14 Editors: Derek Mueller, Lauren Garskie, Jason Tham A fishbowl-styled session at the 2018 RSA Conference in Minneapolis, MN, organized by Trent Kays, convened around a collective concern for what its title posed as “The States and Futures of Digital Rhetorics.” Panelists and the participation-willing among attendees offered and also troubled a range of definitions and premises, some cast onto futuristic horizons, some rooted in the consequences of wide ranging digital practices (and dependencies), some situated in specific problem-solution frameworks, local cases in which digital rhetorics present vividly a reconstituted social fabric or…