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Words and Power
When viewed through a political lens, the act of defining terms in natural language arguably transforms knowledge into values. This unique volume explores how corporate, military, academic, and professional values shaped efforts to define computer terminology and establish an information engineering profession as a precursor to what would become computer science. As the Cold War heated up, U.S. federal agencies increasingly funded university researchers and labs to develop technologies, like the computer, that would ensure that the U.S. maintained economic prosperity and military dominance over the Soviet Union. At the same time, private corporations saw opportunities for partnering with uni...
Edmund Berkeley and the Social Responsibility of Computer Professionals
Edmund C. Berkeley (1909 – 1988) was a mathematician, insurance actuary, inventor, publisher, and a founder of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). His book Giant Brains or Machines That Think (1949) was the first explanation of computers for a general readership. His journal Computers and Automation (1951-1973) was the first journal for computer professionals. In the 1950s, Berkeley developed mail-order kits for small, personal computers such as Simple Simon and the Braniac. In an era when computer development was on a scale barely affordable by universities or government agencies, Berkeley took a different approach and sold simple computer kits to average Americans. He believed...
Critical Power Tools
Winner of the 2007 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Award for Best Collection of Essays on Technical and Scientific Communication The first book to focus on the intersection of cultural studies and technical communication, Critical Power Tools draws on various traditions of cultural studies to develop new or expanded theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical approaches to technical communication. Offered as a sourcebook for the field, the book is organized into three parts. The first section, emphasizing theory building, reconceptualizes key concepts or practices, such as usability, through a cultural studies lens. The second section illustrates alternative research methods through several case studies. The third section offers critical and productive pedagogical approaches, including specific assignments, applicable to both undergraduate and graduate courses.
Spurious Coin
Offers a narrative history of technical writing as a cultural practice and the system of scientific knowledge it controls.
Spurious Coin
Spurious Coin constructs a cultural history of technical writing in the United States and the system of scientific knowledge and power it controls. Embedded in this history are tensions between scientific and liberal arts knowledge-making that render technical writing both the genuine and counterfeit coin of scientific knowledge within our culture. When scientific knowledge is made by scientists and engineers, it can circulate as genuine currency in an economy where communication makes knowledge. When scientific knowledge is made by liberal-arts trained technical writers, however, it circulates as spurious currency and threatens the purity of the knowledge economy. Because the stability of t...
Transnational Research in Technical Communication
Transnational Research in Technical Communication considers the complexities of intercultural projects from a compelling perspective: first-hand narrative reflections. Readers go behind the scenes as scholars share their experiences crossing a variety of borders in their efforts to engage in knowledge-making endeavors. Interwoven through each chapter are stories of how projects were designed, adapted, and sometimes even failed. The collection begins with an introduction situating it at the intersection of recent scholarship in storywork, intercultural research, and technical and professional communication’s social justice turn. Each chapter concludes with discussion questions and recommendations for further reading. The closing chapter reveals a nascent "ethic of transnational and intercultural research" growing out of contributors' lessons learned and generous reflections. Anyone interested in or planning to undertake a transnational or intercultural project can benefit from these storied case studies, and as a result, this collection contributes to moving the field forward as it strives to promote more ethically aware and responsive research.
Writing to Make a Difference
The student projects presented in this book demonstrate a powerful approach to teaching writing, one that requires no special equipment or resources and can be adapted for students of any age. The key is getting students involved in action research and in writing about issues that are important to them and their communities. Written by public school teachers, these chapters describe projects covering a variety of issues, including avoiding teenage health risks, preserving oral histories, fighting racism, investigating environmental hazards, decreasing instances of teen pregnancy, and much more. Based on a process-model of writing instruction, these projects will show teachers how to engage their students while also teaching the basic skills that appear in educational standards and assessment frameworks.
Prophets of Computing
When electronic digital computers first appeared after World War II, they appeared as a revolutionary force. Business management, the world of work, administrative life, the nation state, and soon enough everyday life were expected to change dramatically with these machines’ use. Ever since, diverse prophecies of computing have continually emerged, through to the present day. As computing spread beyond the US and UK, such prophecies emerged from strikingly different economic, political, and cultural conditions. This volume explores how these expectations differed, assesses unexpected commonalities, and suggests ways to understand the divergences and convergences. This book examines thirteen countries, based on source material in ten different languages—the effort of an international team of scholars. In addition to analyses of debates, political changes, and popular speculations, we also show a wide range of pictorial representations of "the future with computers."
Virtual Peer Review
In a reassessment of peer review practices, Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch explores how computer technology changes our understanding of this activity. She defines "virtual peer review" as the use of computer technology to exchange and respond to one another's writing in order to improve it. Arguing that peer review goes through a remediation when conducted in virtual environments, the author suggests that virtual peer review highlights a unique intersection of social theories of language and technological literacy.
The Megarhetorics of Global Development
After World War II, an unprecedented age of global development began. The formation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund allowed war torn and poverty stricken nations to become willing debtors in their desire to entice Western investment and trade. New capital, it was foretold, would pave the way to political and economic stability, and the benefits would "trickle down" to even the poorest citizens. The hyperbole of this neocolonialism, however, has left many of these countries with nothing but compounded debt and unfulfilled promises. The Megarhetorics of Global Development examines rhetorical strategies used by multinational corporations, NGOs, governments, banks, and othe...
