James E. Porter
Professor, Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures
Co-Director, WIDE Research Center
Michigan State University
porterj8@msu.edu

PDF version http://www.wide.msu.edu/widepapers/porteropeningpdf/view

The main question we’re asking at this conference is this: What does writing practice have to do with economic development? A ruder form of that question might be: How could a bunch of writing teachers possibly think they have anything to say about economic development or the digital economy?

Here’s my tentative answer to that question, summed up in two phrases: “information” and “knowledge work.” IF the basis of a digital economy concerns “information”—and not just information as a static entity, a static product—and if the basis of a digital economy pertains (a) to the development of information and, more importantly, its transformation into knowledge (i.e., usable and useful information); and (b) to the delivery and circulation of information via social networks in ways that create value for users, well, then I think that writing teachers, communication scholars, and rhetoric theorists have a lot to offer this discussion.

Going back about two thousand years, classical Roman rhetoric had two terms for the development and distribution of knowledge:

Inventio --> invention, or the creation and development of content

Actio -->  delivery, or the mechanisms and media by which content is presented and circulated

Of course classical rhetoric was predominantly an oral rhetoric. Delivery meant the gestures, physical actions, and voice and intonation of the speaker. But in the realm of digital rhetoric it means something quite different—digital delivery.

These two terms—invention and delivery—are just two of the five classical canons of rhetoric, but they are two that are often neglected or forgotten … and that neglect has to do with the persistence of the predominant alphabetic, print-based view of thinking about writing. The print view sees writing in reductive terms as “words on a page.” That view sees writing instruction as mainly a matter of teaching style and arrangement (your syntax and diction, your grammatical competency, your arrangement of ideas on the page), and teaching it mainly within the realm of print. That’s the narrow, instrumental view of writing ... writing is simply the words you choose to convey your message and how you organize them on the page. The “content” for your writing comes from someplace else ... from real disciplines. Rhetoric as the dress of thought.

But there’s another view of writing, the substantive view—that writing involves understanding the entire scene or context of communication. In the substantive view, the art of writing includes inventing and developing content, determining audience needs, designing effective arguments, designing effective interfaces, compiling evidence, understanding community and cultural values, figuring out where and how to deliver the message, through what technological means, figuring out how to coordinate and collaborate among various writers and groups, figuring out the flows and interrelationship among the elements of communication. And I think Barbara’s conference keynote talk last night provided a great example of how a writing researcher might work to study an entire communication scene and figure out how to make it work better, figure out where the information gaps are. The map Barbara provided in her presentation is a perfect illustration of what I’m talking about: that map, that representation of communication, is what I mean by the scene of writing.

In short, writing involves a bunch of issues and questions that involve critical thinking, deep analysis of communication situations, and both theoretical and practical how-to knowledge. This set of concerns is part of the art of rhetoric.

When rhetoric asks questions about audience and purpose—what is my purpose for writing? who is my audience?—it is also implicitly asking questions about delivery, economics, copyright, and credit. What motivates someone to produce and distribute a piece of writing? What motivates someone else to access it, read it, interact with it? What drives the interaction and makes it productive for both parties? These are basic questions of rhetoric, which are also basic questions of delivery, economics, and copyright. (DeVoss & Porter, in press)

This conference is designed to explore the possibility that rhetoric is epistemic—i.e., that the art of writing has something to do with not just the presentation of knowledge but with the actual development of knowledge—and that that process is critical right now, in our time and place, to economic development. In other words, we are exploring the possibility that

In a digital economy,
knowledge work = digital writing/communication

Which, if this hypothesis is true, means that the ability to write/communicate is way more important than is typically acknowledged. So there’s the daring hypothesis, one we wanted to explore. And we wanted to explore it outside of the usual disciplinary boxes, which is why we have invited you all here … scholars, researchers, smart thinkers from rhetoric, communication theory, information science, business and industry, and writing to help us think differently about this question. On behalf of the WIDE Center, we are very glad that all of you are to help think with us, and I am very much looking forward to our conversations.

REFERENCE

DeVoss, Dànielle, & Porter, James E. (2006). Why Napster matters to writing: Filesharing as a new ethic of digital delivery. Computers & Composition, 23, 178-210.