My Frankenstien! - The Human Machine

This blog is going to be a work-in-progress. It is already massive, I know - but I've really found an interconectedness between many of the authors we're reading, and this is my attempt to connect them and find my own place in the arguments. I'll clean it up later - but this is what I've got so far.
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The "Brass Tacks"of this Blog:

It has taken me awhile to finally formulate a blog (while, admittedly, it probably wouldn't have taken as long had I not been trying to up my brain size and my vocabulary on the Internet and obsessing over Myspace Karaoke). As a result, this blog will be MASSIVE and unattractive to the hurried eye. So be it. I'm hurried, too, so one long blog about multiple authors is how it is going to have to be. As for the "design" of this blog - I've highlighted my main points in bold in effort to invite my readers to pick at least one section to respond to.

Mostly, though, the reason I procrastinated on this particular blog was due to an initial lack of understanding about what the readings were trying to say, while at the same time, having a hard time knowing how I felt about them (that I really "feel" has become an issue thanks to the readings). I have been noticing a few "trends" though (as I allow my human brain to catalogue):

1. That language is being used to describe humans (and society) as "coded" in the articles of the class text AND that language is viewed more in terms of "function." In the Ehses article "Representing MacBeth…," these notions appear, such as when this author writes that style works to arouse the appropriate emotional response [my emphasis] (166). Also, Ehses writes that rhetoric constitutes the functional organization of verbal discourse or messages (165). In fact, it seems that rhetoric functions based on understanding a perceiver's coded responses. Ehses discusses how deviation from ordinary expression produces a "challenge" (168), which demands that rhetors know how humans respond. Obtaining this knowledge means that "…the designer assumes and activates codes by meanings…" (169). Essentially, knowing how humans are socialized to respond to certain (crafted) stimulus enables for more effective function in rhetorical communication.

First, that "designer" has become the new, “hot” word implies an even deeper notion about the ability to create and foster reaction. “Design” seems to imply that every aspect of a communicative effort is considered and placed deliberately for a desired, or expected, outcome.

Second, that humans can be "reduced" to codes, and human communication to coding, bothers me; however, perhaps this verbiage merely reflects our developing technocratic society - the society of the transhuman (http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/). I use "mere" lightly. I think that, as with all media, we have a mirror and we need to look into it to see who we are and who we are becoming. If we speak using technical terms, if we are looked at as coded beings (ahem, machines), what does this mean for the meaning in human interaction? Is it still meaningful? And by whose standards? Sure, machines can connect and interact. Computers talk to each other; however, do they mean anything to each other?

In response to this machination of the human and, consequently, human communication, Michele Shauf posits the humanist against the technologist, writing that there is too much focus on the "function" of language (366). Shauf hopes to imbue this techno-dialectical trend with meaning - meaning that seems a growing absence in the "design" of communication. She notes that there is plenty of technical ambition (i.e. the drive to understand the function of JavaScript) while very little rhetorical ambition (i.e. the drive to understand the meaning that JavaScript achieves on a larger social and communicative scale) (367). She hopes to continue the drive to invent rhetorically versus technically (367). It appears that I share Shauf's concerns. The "humanist" cannot become obsolete in design and technology. One way to achieve this, as Shauf alludes to, is to ask questions. Computers follow commands (well, we hope they do). They do not ask questions of what their users demand of their function. If we look at words or images and give "appropriate" emotional responses, are we then following the commands we are "coded" with? Hmm…

2. There is a continued notion of binaries in the relationship between verbal and visual AND binaries even within the realm of the visual, WHILE there is also a very intricate relationship between the image and corresponding text. First, I do find it a bit odd that there is such subordination of the visual as Ehses notes that "…this society is informed by visual discourse through a wide variety of media to a degree incomparable to any other time" (176). If the visual is so prevalent, why is there such a heated debate about its status compared to written discourse?

Criticisms highlighted by varied authors in the Visual Rhetoric… text point to why it remains subordinate. David Birdsell and Leo Groarke write that "visual images are assumed to be intrinsically arbitrary, vague, ambiguous (310), which leaves them open to suspicion. Additionally, Keith Kenney writes that scholars do not recognize visuals as capable of forming rational arguments because they lack explicit meaning, are perceived as whole (thereby lacking a two-part premise), and that they are prone to what David Perlmutter says is "ideological manipulation" (324, 340). Advertising seems mostly responsible, in my opinion, for the notion or stereotype that images cannot be trusted. That Roland Barthes focuses on the role of the image in advertising does not seem to help the image of "the image" in this argument.

Barthes' article is poignant, however, to one reason why images and text must be integrated. His argument that images are "polysemous" (have more than one meaning) explains why humans rely on the linguistic side to fix their potential uncertainty (156). Though this explains the connection, it only emphasizes the implied deviousness of human communication comprised of both text AND image (and have we ever wondered why humans must be so political, controlled, and devious with each other in their communications?)

Barthes explains, "When it comes to the symbolic message, the linguistic message does not guide identification so much as it guides interpretation" and that "The text directs the reader through the signifieds of the image, causing [her]/him to avoid some and receive others…it remote controls [her]/him towards a meaning chosen in advance" [my emphasis] (156). (Again, the possibility that humans can be remote-controlled appears even here.)

Barthes' explanation "frighteningly" implies that text filters the image, but because the text is 1) more accepted, 2) therefore more trusted, 3) and delivered in segments (versus the whole of the image), it is actually the TEXT that humans should be wary of (but perhaps not only the text – just other humans with “agendas” is what the general populous should be wary of). The wolf/text dresses itself in the sheep/image, essentially.

I used the term "frighteningly" above because of Barthes' mention about the hurried reader (157). Since our technological society encourages us to be so damn busy, we are consequently becoming a hurried society – having no time for anything because our technology gives us the ability to accomplish so many things. Being a hurried society, do we take the time to stop and reflect on what is going on around us? Do we even feel the “need” to do such reflecting – such as asking the question about why text is seen as so authentic, especially compared to the image? When reflections and questions cease to exist, we only become more susceptible to accepting code and being coded.

However, as Punyashloke Mishra (“The Role of Abstraction…”) quotes Gould as saying “iconography comes upon us like a thief in the night – powerful and remarkably efficacious, yet often so silent that we do not detect the influence” and that because images are treated as subordinate to the text, they are not given the attention that the words are given (178). If what Barthes says is true about text guiding interpretation of images, Gould’s assertion is not exactly an accurate view – it is not that the image is more sneaky than text, it is that the text guides us so strongly that we cannot help but see it over the image AND that it tells us what to see in the image.

It's not all bad, though. I like that Barthes shows how text can provide meanings that may not be found in the image itself (157). The benefit to both text and the image is that they both can transcend their own existence depending upon the interpretation(s) they offer. Barthes puts it well when he writes that “The language of the image is not merely the totality of utterances emitted…it is also the totality of utterances received…” (160). Unfortunately, though, if perceivers are coded to receive messages, than the utterance seems to occupy the same meaning as the message received.

2a. Images contain binaries in themselves. As Scott McCloud, Punyashloke Mishra, and Barthes note, however, text and image are not the only components connected in a binary. The drawing and the photograph fall into a binary, where the photograph is seen as more realistic (but distracting according to McCloud) while film, drawings, and diagrams promote a “magical fictional consciousness” (Barthes 159). In this way, images enter into a binary-type relationship, with one being perceived as better than the other because one is considered more truthful than the other.

On the same hand, McCloud implies that different types of images serve different purposes – that if one’s goal is to amplify specific traits, and to deliver an effective message, one should use a generic form so that the perceiver/receiver of the message is not caught up in distraction (207). McCloud shows how different images work differently (serve different functions), thereby taking more of a genre approach – which is, it seems the best rhetorical option any “designer” could work from because it admits that in every situation, every image or text may not be appropriate or may be more appropriate than another. Does this mean that one is better than the other? In McCloud's presentation, value judgments about communication mediums are context-based, not inherent to the communication medium's nature.

Mishra points out the importance of genre when considering the usefulness of a picture versus a diagram in scientific illustrations and discussions. For instance, "…a photograph is an imperfect representation of an actual object, while a diagram represents it more faithfully" (187). In this case, the traditional notion that the photograph is more authentic or realistic than the diagram works against someone trying to see all aspects of a cell, for instance. McCloud's assertion that simplification amplifies works well in terms of using a diagram in place of a picture. A "cartoon" cell would relay different information than a microscope image of a cell; however, both are useful for the science student.

3. Images (and what they are images of) seem able to occupy multiple subject positions (they can center, while de-center simultaneously). Mishra states directly that “pictures have a double reality” and that “pictures are unique among objects; for they are seen both as themselves and as some other thing…” (182). This is a paradoxical existence for images - one that seems an answer to the problem of the binary, while also the very thing that keeps images suspect. Since images can be "something else" or something different than they are, this leaves skeptics continuing their suspicions about the authenticity of images. Words also share double (perhaps triple, quadruple) meanings, such as the infamous "double entendre" construction. Moreover, the words of the Bible have never been more debated due to many possible interpretations (literal vs. symbolic). I am beginning to see that the image is, in fact, unfairly suspected and maintain that ALL of human communication is worth some inspection.