Poet Ponders the Digital

By May, I'll be half-way through an MFA in Film and Digital Technology. People ask why a Ph.D in rhetoric would need an MFA. My explanation follows. Rhetoric (and composition, since they are often lumped together in academic settings) has struggled between the tension to teach traditional rhetoric and a need to update our courses and field to reflect new technologies and trends in communication. Other departments expect us to teach how to format academic papers (MLA, APA) and write traditional genres: the five-paragraph (yuck) "essay" (which isn't an essay at all), the term paper, the journal article, the "book review" (again, which isn't a review at all), the thesis, and so on. We know these forms and many of us want to resist them. Yet, our classroom work is often relegated to the "service" of other academic fields. Shifting away from composition seems necessary for me to explore rhetoric where it is now most effective at reaching broa...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley February 3, 2014 Deadline March 2014 Issue Social Media Getting Older, Losing Its Cool Social media are losing their “cool” factor, becoming a part of the largely ignored information static in our daily lives. Automated “bots” dominate Twitter, sending out so many tweets that it takes an effort to find any value. A small group of real, human users remain entertaining and informative, but searching and sorting tweets requires too much effort to be fun anymore. If you follow sports scores, news alerts or special events then Twitter is a wonderful tool. My friends who participate in fantasy sports leagues rely on Twitter for breaking news, at least on game days. They seldom send tweets, except to trade barbs with other “team owners” in the leagues. Twitter was supposed to make “texting” more social and more engaging, but the sheer volume of traffic renders Twitter useless. For most of us, hashtags, those “#WordsToFollow” that need a secret decode...

University instructors have it somewhat easier than K12 teachers: accepting "friend" requests from our students, especially our adult and non-traditional students, isn't much of an ethical quagmire. Still, you have to be careful and have some guidelines or you'll risk trouble. 1) I only accept "friend" requests from former students who are 21 or older, so nobody can claim I have favorites or suggest anything untoward. Connecting to young students is, in my opinion, always a bad idea — especially for male teachers, but we've seen female teachers have "problems" online, too. I explain to students that it isn't that I don't like them or want to be friends later in life, but it is important to maintain professional standing while they are in my courses. 2) LinkedIn is the "safest" social network for teachers to remain connected to former students. It is a professional, career-oriented network that is more about employment ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley April 8, 2013 Deadline May 2013 Issue Tech Etiquette: Why Manners Still Matter As my wife and I watched the actors on stage, the woman sitting beside me raised her iPad and started to record the performance. She waved the iPad, aiming around and above the people sitting in the row below us. I dodged her elbows and tried to ignore this breach of etiquette as best I could. When you attend a live event, unless it is your child’s play or recital, do not try to record the performance with a phone or tablet. The devices are not inconspicuous. A handheld video camera might be small and (slightly) less annoying to other audience members, and I’d still prefer that nobody have one in the audience. Community and college theater companies often record their performances. If you ask, many schools and community groups will make copies of their recordings. Yet, I counted at least a dozen people trying to capture video on phones and tablets during the night. I’...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley March 4, 2013 Deadline April 2013 Issue Getting Social to Build Your Business Facebook, Twitter , Foursquare, Yelp and more. If you want to grow your business today, you need to know the power of social networking. You also need to be prepared to change your social media strategy quickly to keep up with trends. Social networks come and go, as quickly as the “likes” and “trending” data they report. In the late 1990s, I recommended basic Web pages and e-mail addresses to my clients. Today, deciding which types of online presences are best for a business or organization presents a challenge. Whether you focus on business-to-business (B2B) services or retail sales helps determine the best online strategy for your company. The more public exposure your company seeks, the more important a social media presence will be. The basic Web presence still serves a purpose, and inexpensive hosting services cost the same as a stack of good business cards. Bu...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 29, 2011 Deadline October 2011 Issue Artists Gather Online: The Valley’s Virtual Art Colonies Not long after the first artist used charcoal and ground seeds to create the first cave painting, the first critic arrived on the scene. Having stated a mastodon could create better artwork, the critic then left the artist alone in his cave. I am certain that within months, a handful of prehistoric artists met around a fire to reassure each other that critics were simply Neanderthals without any artistic abilities. Over the following centuries, artists gathered in various places. Among the more popular settings where author’s met were cafés, restaurants and unemployment lines. Being an artist has never been easy and it is only occasionally profitable. It’s little wonder that artists need to gather and commiserate. After gathering, artists find themselves reenergized. The support of your creative peers makes it a little less terrifying to expose...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley October 4, 2010 Deadline November 2010 Issue Building a Business via Social Networks Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn and a myriad of social networking Internet technologies are reshaping how businesses develop and maintain customer relationships. Just as a Web presence became a standard marketing tool by the late 1990s, a “social network” identity is becoming an essential part of brand development. Writers, musicians and actors have to be good at self-promotion. Celebrity Twitter feeds are read by millions of loyal fans. Many celebrities also maintain blogs and public accounts on Facebook or MySpace. We can learn from the examples of celebrities, both what to do and what not to do with the power of social networking. One local mystery writer has turned social networking into an effective promotional tool. Marilyn Meredith, a Springville resident, writes a blog entry almost daily. These entries are on both the business and craft of writing. To se...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 2010 Issue May 1, 2010 The Trails We Leave Behind Your “tweets” are about to be stored — forever, or as close to forever as data get. The Library of Congress has announced a plan to archive all public Twitter posts, indefinitely. If you use the microblogging service Twitter, this means at least some of your random thoughts are destined for a massive database. The Library of Congress announced on April 14, 2010, that every Twitter message since 2006 will be archived for historians and other scholars to study. Some compare this to being able to read the conversations of “average people” from any time in history. In ancient Roman colonies, messages were left on shards of pottery. From those shards, archeologists have such mundane items as shopping lists. Having bits of daily life allow us to see beyond the lives of famous and powerful individuals. Sometimes, we forget that messages can be forwarded from one friend to another. We also forge...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2009 Issue September 27, 2009 Beyond the Valley: Are We There Yet? The Virtual Valley was supposed to bring us all together. Our physical location was supposed to matter less than with whom we connected online. Yet, there seem to be limits to our online social networks. Researchers have studied online communities for almost three decades, often assuming virtual communities were going to liberate us from traditional barriers. This year we saw evidence that barriers persist online. Eszter Hargittai, a sociologist at Northwestern University, calls this the “Whose Space?” phenomenon. Users, however, being less politically correct than academics, have rechristened MySpace as “MyGhetto,”  “GangstaSpace” and “MyHood.” According to Hargittai’s data, Hispanics are twice as likely to use MySpace as Facebook. There is also a high correlation between educational level and which social sites someone uses. Of those using a social site, 86 perce...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley October 2009 Issue August 26, 2009 Facebook Fling and Twitter Toss: The Risks of Social Computing to Your Computer There was a time the greatest risk to a laptop at a coffee shop was the menu. Everyone knows that coffee and keyboards do not mix. Only a few short years ago, you took a computer to a coffee shop, bookstore, or all-night diner to work. The laptop was for business or school and your greatest worry was locating a free power outlet. Other than the iced mochas I love, tripping on the power cord was the only serious risk to my laptop. Along came wireless networks and the “Social Web” of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Now, the greatest risk to laptops seems to be rage. According to an August report on CNet, a technology news Web site, computer technicians suddenly find they have to explain to laptop users that warranties don’t cover damage caused by computing while angry. Techs have started to refer to the incidents by a series of hum...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley September 2009 Issue July 27, 2009 Facebook, YouTube and… You, Unemployed For the past few years, I have told my students to consider carefully what they post online. Like many educators and parents, I want my students to think about their online reputations. But, the rules are changing and we’re losing some control over our online selves. What others reveal about you is as important as anything you might post online. “Most of what I worry about, the job applicant didn’t actually post.” As a human resource specialist for a large, national service company, the woman I was talking to hires young men and women who enter the businesses and private homes of customers. These employees represent their employer and its tech-savvy image. Because I teach a professional development course for university juniors and seniors, I thought my warnings not to put too much personal information online was sufficient. I had overlooked that friends, those fun peopl...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 2009 Issue May 3, 2009 Twittering or Tweeting, It’s Not for Everyone I don’t tweet. Apparently, I’m not as cool as Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey, or the dozens of media personalities begging us the follow them via Twitter. Twitter (http://twitter.com/ without the “www”) is a “microblogging” service that allows anyone to post short messages via the Internet or cell phone. The concept is deceptively simple: instead of sending a text message to one person from your phone or computer, why not send the same message instantly to a large group? When you post a message to Twitter, you “tweet.” Some people are tweeting constantly, letting their followers know their every move and thought. Other people and organizations use Twitter for major events and announcements. The recipients of messages are known as “followers” on Twitter. If I wanted people to receive my tweets, I would ask them to follow my twitter feed. There is definitely a unique Twitte...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley May 2009 Issue March 30, 2009 Virtual Romances, Real Complications “He was in my guild. Probably the best thief I’ve ever met.” When I began approaching acquaintances for a column about finding romance online, I expected to hear stories like you see in the television commercials. You know the commercials: the matchmaking service finds the perfect match based on math and science. “We chatted online while plotting strategies. He was clever, funny, and I just knew I had to get to know him outside the game.” As it turns out, my friends are either skeptical of the hype or they are too cheap to pay for online matchmaking. Instead, the people I know have found online romance when they haven’t been searching for love, proving the old truism about love finding you. Apparently, love can find you between heists in virtual worlds. Since I am not an online gamer — I play Scrabble, Word Jong, and Chessmaster on a Nintendo DS — I had no idea people were me...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley March 2009 Issue Feb 2, 2009 Social Networking and Facebook The “Mommy Revolt” on Facebook earlier this year was evidence social networking has gone mainstream. Members of the social networking site were upset when Facebook employees deemed photos of mothers nursing inappropriate. It was a case of original intent versus user desires. The mothers ended up forming a Facebook group of angry nursing mothers and their “fans.” I’m not sure anyone would claim not to be a fan of motherhood. Facebook certainly didn’t like being perceived as “anti-mom” and soon relented. These women had learned to use Facebook’s social networking features against the company. Facebook’s executives have said they don’t want to lose any “mature” and “responsible” users. The problem is, users have a way of not being serious all the time. No matter what a company might intend when it creates a Web site, visitors tend to determine how the technology will be used. And so, wha...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2007 Issue October 14, 2007 Changing Holidays The holidays are changing, and I don’t just mean the fact that the Toyland section opened in mid-October at my favorite warehouse store. Another major change is the loss of Christmas cards. Charlie Brown used to wait at the mailbox for even one card. Today, he’d be waiting for an electronic greeting, which offers slightly more warmth than a “video fireplace” and some virtual eggnog. Every major greeting card company offers e-cards, often through portals like Yahoo or MSN. Programs like The Print Shop and Print Explosion also offer an e-card design option, where your customized card design is sent via e-mail to a recipient.       I suppose we’re saving thousands of trees with e-cards, and some of us are finally getting cards to people before the new year begins, but you can’t cover a door with e-cards or stand them on a shelf to remind yourself of all the wonderful people in...