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Ever since the computer was introduced some 50 years ago, its role in society has been increasing. From being a tool for scientists and technicians, the computer has become a concern for everyone. Different actors engaged in introducing — or denouncing — this technology, have used many strong words for winning others to the cause. The high symbolic value tied to computers and information technology has made the rhetoric used to "sell" these very explicit. This discourse, the language and arguments used, is the object of study in the dissertation. When it became clear that computers could be used also for rationalising administration, the Swedish government started to investigate how this could be done. In the 1960s, this became one of the first big computerisation projects in Sweden. It turned out to be a controversy between two different ways of organising a big administrative system: national contra regional/local or hierarchical contra decentralised. It also turned out to bee a "war" between the suggested computer makes that should equip the County Computer Centres. In the late 70s, when the "PC revolution" was only beginning, the Luxor ABC 80 computer became the best selling micro in Sweden, outscoring TRS-80, Apple II and Commodore PET many times. From 1978 to 1986 Luxor ABC computers were by far the most used personal computers. A decade later, in the early 1990s, the info-highway hype struck Sweden. Giving politicians arguments for a new wave of computerisation, but now less based on technology and more directed towards the use of "information superhighways" which the development within IT had made possible. These three instances in Swedish computing history form the historical background for this study of computer rhetoric, of the discourse that evolves when a new technological frame is being introduced in society. The social construction of artefacts is an outcome of communication between people. Therefore the language used by different actors in the various "texts" they produce is of vital interest if we want to understand technology and our relationship with it. But it is also true that technology helps to set the frames of our minds. A rhetoric of technology must take this relation into account. ; The electronic version of the printed dissertation is a corrected version where all spelling and grammatical errors are corrected.

Development of the cochlear implant, discussed in this article, depended vitally on deaf people being persuaded to undergo implantation. Media "reconstruction" of the device as the "bionic ear" was typically encouraged by implant pioneers. Unexpectedly, however, a "counter-rhetoric" based on a very different understanding of deafness emerged. With it, deaf people are slowly succeeding in gaining influence over the further deployment of the technology. The analysis suggests modifications to existing theoretical models of technological change in medicine.

In the spirit of Alvin Toffler's acclaimed works peering into the future of the technological society, Communication Shock is a concise history of communication technologies and an exploration of the possible social and human impacts of nanotechnology on the ecology of human communication. As we become increasingly more networked with communication technologies, we must come to understand and confront the social impact of these changes. More importantly, we must wisely choose in embracing or rejecting these technologies and exploring how we might do both by striking an appropriate balance.Grounded in communication theory and praxis, Communication Shock brings some objectivity to the discussion of technology, maps its development, and encourages a rational conversation about its potential problems and promise. It challenges readers to reach their own conclusions - about the future, imagined and unimaginable, about the fundamental values in conflict, and how one might choose to embrace or contest them to maintain individual autonomy in the face of increasingly ubiquitous marketing and technological change.Present and emerging communications technologies hold the promise for a bold new future, but they also have their inherent risks and drawbacks. Communication shock is the human response, conscious or unconscious, wherein the individual chooses to resist the growing pervasiveness of technology in his or her life by seeking ways to reduce or redirect new technologies or to reject the addition of such technologies altogether. Here is a framework for understanding the potential of the evolving technologies, determining which are essential and which are distractions from the life that one believes to be meaningful, and making informed choices for the life one wishes to live

"Argues that virtue ethics supports postmodern criticisms of rational autonomy and universalism, while enabling a discussion of actual ethical behaviors that digital users form through particular communicative ends and various rhetorical purposes. Extending Aristotle's framework of hexis through the framework of contemporary virtue ethicists and political theorists"--Provided by publisher

This book examines the discourse surrounding the wireless, created by the Anglo-Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. The wireless excited early twentieth-century audiences before it even became a viable black box technology. The wireless adhered to modernist values--speed, efficiency, militarization, and progress. Language surrounding the wireless is a form of technical communication, overlooked by today's practitioners. This book establishes a broader definition for technical communication by examining a selection of the discourse surrounding Marconi's wireless. The book's main themes are the following: 1) technical communication is all discourse surrounding technology, 2) the field of technical communication (or technical writing) should incorporate analyses of discourse surrounding technologies into its epistemology, 3) the wireless is a product of the society from which it comes (early twentieth-century Western civilization), and 4) the discourse surrounding the wireless is infused with tropes of progress--speed, efficiency, evolution, and ahistoricity.

Identifying nostalgic conflicts. Nostalgic design: between innovation and tradition -- Nostalgic resistances: remembering as critical redesign in everyday workplaces -- Mediating nostalgia. Nostalgic deliberations: what I mean when I say "democratizing technology" -- Nostalgic mediations: asking the right questions in vaccine communication -- Nostalgic negotiations: adapting, adopting, and refusing client expertise -- Designing for nostalgia. Nostalgic UX: designing for future memories -- Afterword: from English major to designer.

Examines moments in traditions of appeals, warnings, demands, and debates to make explicit the connections between technological issues and African Americans' equal and just participation in American society. This volume is intended for researchers, professionals, and students in Rhetoric, Computers and Composition, and African American Studies

The organizational benefits of digital technologies are increasingly contrasted with negative societal consequences. Such tensions are contradictory, persistent and interrelated, suggesting paradoxes. Yet, we lack insight into how such apparent paradoxes are constructed and to what effect. This empirical paper draws upon interviews with thirty-nine responsibility managers to unpack how paradoxes are discursively (re)constructed and resolved as a rhetoric of 'balance' that ensures identification with organizational, familial and societal interests. We also reveal how such 'false balance' sustains and legitimizes organizational activity by displacing responsibilities onto distant 'others' through temporal (futurizing), spatial (externalizing) and level (magnifying / individualizing) rhetorical devices. In revealing the process of paradox construction and resolution as 'balance' in the context of digitalization and its unanticipated outcomes, we join conversations into new organizational responsibilities in the digital economy, with implications for theory and practice.

1. New analytic approaches -- 2. Learning from technology and country-specific analysis -- 3. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) -- 4. Assessing existing international policy mechanisms -- 5. Low-carbon technology transfer and poverty alleviation -- 6. Low-carbon technology transfer in the context of other global concerns -- 7. Moving forward : new directions for policy and practice.