As part of my Digital Rhetorics course at the IT University of Copenhagen, I’ve written this little assignment on my personal goals for the course. Since it is a Digital Rhetorics class, I thought it best to do it proper blogging style with lots of hyperlinks.
Fast forward to January 2006, the Digital Rhetorics course will have finished by then, and I will have learned fair bit through it:
I will have discussed the major elements of style and delivery in Digital Representations, including websites, blogs, MOOs and other online games, IRC channels and other message fora, flash games and movies. I will have had a chance to discuss how the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory affects on Digital Rhetorics, both in the most thoughtfully composed texts as well as the most rude remarks in a random IRC channel.
I will have realised some of the extent that hypertext and hyperlinking can revolutionize the way that we conceive and navigate through digital texts and tested and discussed some of those wider possibilities â?? as suggested by Ted Nelson . And as practised by, among others, Cornelius Holtorf.
I will have taken part in varied and bold discussions on communicative technology, drawing on and drawing in everything from Langdon Winner and Ivan Illich to Lev Manovich and Gonzalo Frasca â?? a discussion that hopefully will introduce me to a lot of new and interesting ideas and theories concerning the rhetorics of the digital realm.
I will have had a chance to explore elements of the still nascent idea of artful computer code, maybe specifically Perl Poetry and other ways to mix the language of the computer with the languages of the people using them.
I will have tried to create montage from some of all these ideas and possibilities, combining them through hithereto unseen or unexpected connections, seeking Apophenia. Unlikely as that will have proven to be.
Finally, through this course I will have made a bunch of new friends and acquaintances, who may share or come to share my fascination with all these aspects of communicating through digital means.