“Rhetoric and Digital Media: Collective Intelligence from Kenneth Burke to Pierre Lévy and Beyond” – James P. Zappen
Central issue: “(…) the hope (…) surrounding the development of new digital technologies of communication (…)” that focuses on “(…) their potential to support and sustain ‘collective intelligence’, to promote collaboration, participation, and the development of social communities.” (JPZ, p.1)
Relativity (in the social sphere) = “differences ‘between the situations, or experiences, of different individuals when the same events appear in different spatiotemporal cogredient sets.’” (JPZ, p.3)
> “Rhetoric has something useful to contribute to this debate, as an ideal and a social practice.” (JPZ, p.1)
> “(…) the power of rhetoric ‘as a symbolic means of including cooperation’” (JPZ, p.2)
>> (Burke)
Identification = means by which “(…) rhetoric seeks to build a community (…)” (ibid.)
> “(…) it at once both overcomes and also solidifies and perpetuates divisions.” (ibid.)
(Mead)
Identification = “(…) the appearance of the other in the self, the identification of the other with the self, the reaching of self-consciousness through the other” (Mead, p.253 in JPZ, p.4)
> “(…) communication involving participation in the other.” (JPZ, p.4)
>> identification “as a means of negotiating multiple discourses and points of view.” (ibid.)
> co-operative competition = a dialectical (inter)action between different voices that is mutually corrective so it might lead to transcending the individual limitations of each view. (cf. Gee’s Worked Examples…)
(Lévy)
Collective intelligence = “‘a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilization of skills’ aimed at ‘the mutual recognition and enrichment of individuals rather than the cult of fetishized or hypostatized communities.” (Lévy, p.13 in JPZ, p.5)
> mass communication as:
- a threat: mediatization as a way to manage the masses by interchangeability of individuals
- an asset: digitization as way to indefinitely enhance individual qualities through constant refinement (development and redevelopment) of projects and resources.
> (Bruns) Web 2.0
“(…) Collaborative produsage as the driving force behind collective intelligence(...)” (JPZ, p.7)
> Key affordances: open participation, communal evaluation, fluid heterachy, ad hoc meritocracy, unfinished (continuing) artifacts, common property (balanced through individual rewards) (ibid.)
> Critique: (Jaron Lanier) “At its best, collective intelligence depends not upon a mere aggregation of limited intelligences but the contributions of exceptional individuals.” (JPZ, p.8)
>>> “As a social practice, rhetoric presents a challenge to those who design and use these technologies, a challenge to shape them not only for the purpose of persuasion but also for the purpose of adjudicating and negotiating multiple and potentially competing discourses and points of view through collaboration, cooperation, competition in the interest of producing (…) social knowledge and social communities that are richer and ‘better than’ any one person alone could produce” (JPZ, p.9)
+ “(…) games that invite us to engage others both like and unlike ourselves in collective problem-solving activities, to test our own ideas against the ideas of others, and to play out the consequences of our own and our collective decisions in safe, engaging, and immersive environments.” (JPZ, p.10)