On February 18, 2016, Georgia State University held the second of its HTML and CSS classes: HTML & CSS 2: Adding Style to Pages 2016.
After creating a HTML document, we wrote a CSS document that coincided with and stylized the HTML document. Having only learned how to make a website through coding in a class two weeks prior, this class took the knowledge to another level adding complexity and creativity to the process. I added borders, changed margins, altered color, font, and size of text, and changed background colors.
While countless books line the shelves claiming to teach you how to write a grant, only one discusses how to create a career as a grant writer. Careers in Grant Writing by Caroline S. Reeder attempts to do what the others don’t—explain how you can write grants for others, for a living. Other books want to walk you through the steps of finding funding and composing a grant, but Reeder tries to tell you how to get your foot in the door in order to bring home the bacon.
As an aspiring proposal writer, I looked forward to a book by a seasoned, professional grant writer. With the growing need for funding in organizations and the volume of grants available, this career choice seems like a viable option. While I enjoyed Reeder’s candid prose, there was no striking information that hadn’t been thought of before, assumed, or found elsewhere. The short text seems written for someone with no idea of what grant writing is or what grant writers do. While this may be valuable for someone, somewhere out there, for a person with an inkling of an idea about grant writing it is a summary, amassing information found in other places together in one small notebook, easily carried but also easily overlooked.
After quickly scanning through what a grant is and what characteristics go with a grant writer position, the 35-page text touches upon the daily responsibilities of a grant writer and how to get a job in the field. Apparently, education is not as vital to the position as experience. Reeder suggests volunteering or working an internship to get the experience necessary to secure a position. While an entry level position is available through education and training courses, the author doesn’t give the reader the feeling that this is actually a viable option. I wonder if this is true, or if perhaps this is because the author didn’t enter the field that way? How much of this text is based upon Reeder’s experience and how much is based upon research into grant writing careers?
Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the book is Reeder’s discussion on the merits of working for an organization versus freelance grant writing. She discusses the pros and cons of benefits and scheduling, and the best way to get paid. Moving on, Reeder touches upon the daily duties involved in grant writing, which are not just composing, but also researching, working with others, maintaining schedules, and building relationships.
While it appears Reeder didn’t intend on becoming a grant writer, she has done well in the field and her self-published book is the only one discussing a career in the field versus the how-tos of writing a grant. Since the need of funding is increasing, the demand for skilled grant writers is growing. While this short book is a summary of information, it is nice to have that information organized and tucked away in a book that is easy to carry around.
“Assemblage theory . . . emphasizes fluidity, exchangeability, and multiple functionalities. Assemblages appear to be functioning as a whole, but are actually coherent bits of a system whose components can be ‘yanked’ out of one system, ‘plugged’ into another, and still work”
The parts that are able to combine and make meaning, change, evolve, or exchange and create alternate meanings are assemblages.
This also defines media flow. A flow that is not a linear path, like a river, but is instead a series of things that are linked to one another, connected, and interact (Reeves 316). The flow can move back and forth connecting one idea or bit of information to another.
It is the parts rather than the sum, yet all the parts combine to create meaning of some sort.
Media flow is the main idea of Joshua Reeves’ “Temptation and Its Discontents: Digital Rhetoric, Flow, and the Possible.” Reeves explores the “flow” of digital compositions on the World Wide Web, examining how presentation of multimodal compositions impacts audience interaction with the composition, and how the audience is both liberated and constrained by it.
Traditional rhetorical texts possess a linear flow that leads the audience down the author’s intended path. Through the rise of multimodal compositions online, texts now have images, videos, links, and advertisements; there is information everywhere, leading the audience on divergent paths.
Like this…
Having options in a text provides audiences with a sense of autonomy and choice, however Reeves’ thinks that choice is an illusion and that texts are still carefully crafted to provide an audience with specific information.
After reading Reeves’ article I began to look differently at websites. Specific things are linked and embedded to create a structured flow where the options of what you can follow are carefully selected for you. For example, on the University of Texas website, “Assemblage Theory” cited above, the only linked words are “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Why are other words not linked, such as “Gilles Deleuze” or “Organismic Matter”? Are they any less important? What are the purposes of choosing which words to link and which to not link? By leaving things out, either purposefully or coincidentally, the composer is altering the possibilities. While we feel like we have control as the audience (we get to chose whether we click or not), the composers purposeful presentation controls our experience and knowledge acquisition (by limiting what we can click).
So, what does this mean for our interactions with texts? How did the previous video alter the flow of this composition? How have my linking decisions (to link or not to link) affected your choice to click or not? How, as the composer have I altered your interaction with this text?
Teresa Rizzo in the article “Television Assemblages” uses the assemblage theory also in relation to media, but focuses on the evolution of television into a multiplatform model. She explains how television had been viewed as a single static entity, but it is really just a sum of parts. Those parts have changed and taken new forms into what is now a “network of connections” with the Internet and technology disrupting the television consumption algorithm (Rizzo).
Television is no longer dependent upon a large broadcast network, confined to a set schedule, or stuck in the living room. Shows and movies can now be watched anytime, anywhere, as mobility emerges. Interaction and participation are prevalent as audience members create their own content and comment on what they are watching. This generates all kinds of possibilities. What will be actualized is yet to be seen and depends upon the configuration of assemblages.
This stance on possibility, what could happen and what actually happens, is linked to linearity. Rizzo thinks that linearity does not exist within assemblages, rather a “linear cause and effect logic” is only in hindsight, once you already know what happened—“it only has determinacy when read retroactively; it could always have happened otherwise” (Rizzo). If assemblages are all about “an infinite number of possibilities” then it leaves no straightforward linear path (Rizzo). While I find this to be interesting, I wonder if anything can be truly linear then? Can the concept of linearity even exist? If not, then has linear composition been a false idea in rhetoric all along? Perhaps it is the lover of narrative in me, but I have a difficult time believing Rizzo’s point here.
Besides debating the concept of linearity, the articles are in conversation with each other concerning customization. Personalization enables a device to respond to the likes and dislikes of that particular person. While this concept seems like a great filter, I wonder what costs are associated with it.
Personal data collection is everywhere. Rizzo speaks of children using devices to watch television, well then what sort of information is being collected on our kids? Reeves thinks that “[v]irtually every move we make on the Web is being captured and analyzed by strategists who are designing ever more refined ways to govern our lives on and offline” (326). Composers, producers, and advertisers are purposefully structuring our media flow to achieve their own goals. Based on the ads that pop up on my computer, I’d agree.
Despite the wealth of information available in the world, both theorist worry that websites and applications will become so personalized that people will not continue to be exposed to new knowledge and differing opinions. Reeves calls this the “echo chamber,” where we only see and hear things that agree with us, stunting our growth and prohibiting ourselves from emerging into our potential. I believe people do this anyway. Our environment and our personal choices affect what we see and hear. Some people chose to tune out what they don’t agree with. Through the emergence of personalization in technology, I think that the audience still has a legitimate choice, to close things out or to open to possibility.
As media continues to change, reorganizing its assemblages and flowing through the channels of technology, it will be interesting to see how rhetoric in these spaces emerges. I tend to think that much will stay the same, with adaptions here and there to fit the needs of changing technology. As more and more websites and applications are developed, the way in which we interact with compositions evolves. By going mobile and breaking with linear tradition, there is no telling where it will go from here.
“Assemblage Theory.” Texas Theory. University of Texas, 2010. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
Reeves, Joshua. “Temptation And Its Discontents: Digital Rhetoric, Flow, And The Possible.” Rhetoric Review 32.3 (2013): 314-330. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
Rizzo, Teresa. “Television Assemblages.” The Fibreculture Journal 24 (2015): n. pag. The Fibreculture Journal. Open Humanities Press. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
Georgia State University offers CII training courses in varying computer programs and programming techniques. Last Thursday, February 4th, I attended the HTML & CSS 1: Getting Started class. Having no prior html experience, the class was incredibly informative and encouraging. It was so incredible to type information and see it appear as a website. It is the most basic of websites and html texts, but it was a huge step for me and I look forward to making more!
Note: The media selected for the lesson was chosen by the instructor and is not a reflection of me.
Below is the html document I made, a link to the site from that document and a screenshot of the class particulars.
HTML Document
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My First Website</title>
</head>
<body>
<header>
<h1>Hello World</h1>
</header>
<img src=”thumbs-up.jpg” alt=”Thumbs Up”>
<!~~ this is how you can comment on things in code but it will not be shown in website, maybe use this for things you don’t know if you want yet or not? ~~>
Through the Internet, we feel disembodied, separated from our words. Protected by a screen. Able to display who we want to be rather than who we may be. Then we continue on with our lives as though the electronic world somehow exists outside of the real world.
But when what other people post and publish online is able to affect us personally, I begin to wonder how separated we really are. If we were truly disembodied from electronic discourse then we wouldn’t be getting depressed by status updates, suicidal from cyber-bullying, and terrified by trolls. How is it that the Internet can hold so much power over our well-being? And how is it we could ever think electronic discourse is disembodied?
