That is a question I am still attempting to figure out. Tonight's post will be short, but not solely because the piece I read is short. I read Carolyn R. Miller's foreword to Rhetorics and Technologies: New Directions in Writing and Communication edited by Stuart A. Selber entitled "Rhetoric, Technology, and the Pushmi-Pullyu." My first reaction is what the heck does pushmi-pullyu even mean in this context. Three pages later, yes, it was only three pages, and I'm still not sure if I know.
According to Miller, both rhetoric and technology have this pushmi-pullyu affect, basically based on supply and demand. With technology, we are pushed by the supply of discoveries, etc, and pull along by external forces or demand. I can understand this and see where it occurs all the time. The iPad, for instance, seems to me like it is a push kind of technology. There was really no demand for such technology, but the technology existed to create or supply the artifact, and thus, we have the iPad.
Until I begin actually reading this book, which won't be for a while yet as I have the other book to finish first, I want to leave it with this quote from Miller, which I believe might sum this whole idea up in the proverbial nutshell. Miller states that "If rhetoric is the art that adjusts ideas to people and people to ideas, we might characterize technology as the art that accommodates the material world to people and people to the material world" (x). Food for thought.
According to Miller, both rhetoric and technology have this pushmi-pullyu affect, basically based on supply and demand. With technology, we are pushed by the supply of discoveries, etc, and pull along by external forces or demand. I can understand this and see where it occurs all the time. The iPad, for instance, seems to me like it is a push kind of technology. There was really no demand for such technology, but the technology existed to create or supply the artifact, and thus, we have the iPad.
Until I begin actually reading this book, which won't be for a while yet as I have the other book to finish first, I want to leave it with this quote from Miller, which I believe might sum this whole idea up in the proverbial nutshell. Miller states that "If rhetoric is the art that adjusts ideas to people and people to ideas, we might characterize technology as the art that accommodates the material world to people and people to the material world" (x). Food for thought.
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