[cs_content][cs_section bg_color="hsl(0, 0%, 100%)" parallax="false" separator_top_type="none" separator_top_height="50px" separator_top_angle_point="50" separator_bottom_type="none" separator_bottom_height="50px" separator_bottom_angle_point="50" class="cs-ta-left" style="margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="2/3" style="padding: 0px;"][cs_text]In 1935 Walter Benjamin wrote, "Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted...
Ethical Design and Time Well Spent
The amount of time we spend engaged with our digital devices, especially our smart phones, doesn’t necessarily make us feel more empowered. The organization Time Well Spent argues that the reason for this isn’t some moral failing on the part of users but rather a question of intentional design: “Many...
Invisible Knowledge
Since you’re reading this online publication, I imagine that you, like me, leave hundreds of digital traces every day. A lot of these traces are things we can see--things like emails, texts, blog posts, twitter posts, photographs, Youtube comments, or Facebook likes. But today I’m particularly interested in the invisible,...
Machine Communication: Using and Understanding MIDI
When multi-track recording was developed in 1955, it allowed for the concept of "production" as we understand the term in contemporary music-terminology. By recording the individual elements of a performance, one could alter and edit each part of the whole composition, or start from individual parts and construct an...
Rhetorical Synthesis: The Story of the Roland TB-303
The Roland TB-303 is one of the most influential electronic instruments to date. The story of the instrument and its influence remind us that objects can be "active agents rather than passive instruments or backdrops for human activity" (Boyle, Barnett). The machine is an analogue, monophonic bass line synthesizer created...
Pedagogical Periscope: The Basics of Streaming a Webinar from Your Phone
Whether it’s the weather or you’re just feeling under the weather, traveling to campus and working with students in person isn’t always the best course of action for your writing course. In fact, staying home can sometimes be the most pedagogically effective choice—students always will appreciate the break, and you...
The Future of Six Second Compositions
[cs_content][cs_section parallax="false" style="margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px;"][cs_text]Vine, a Twitter-owned video app since 2012, allowed users to create six-second video loops. "Vine stars," who cleverly used the app for optical illusions or comedy, emerged as popular online figures. After...
Lesson Plan: Wearable Devices as Personal Archives
[cs_content][cs_section parallax="false" style="margin: 0px;padding: 50px 0px 10px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px;"][x_image type="none" src="http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/archive-header.jpg" alt="Stacks of folders on shelves, stuffed with aged yellowed papers. Messily organized and placed in a dim room, the image is the classic representation of an archive, where...
Teaching Wearables and Metadata: An Introduction
[cs_content][cs_section parallax="false" style="margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px;"][cs_text]This semester, Team Wearables is committed to providing faculty interested in digital rhetoric and pedagogy with lesson plans that get at the heart of academic issues surrounding the proliferation of wearable devices....
Lesson Plan: Wearable Tech and Metadata
[cs_content][cs_section parallax="false" style="margin: 0px;padding: 50px 0px 10px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px;"][x_image type="none" src="http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/metadata.png" alt="An image of words jumbled together, some of which are emboldened for effect. Some of the words in bold include "Metadata," "Information," "Data," and "Definitions"." link="false" href="#" title=""...