Follow-up on Tufte
In his The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (2003), E. Tufte argues that PowerPoint software "actively facilitates the making of lightweight presentations" (26). His arguments on this point are pretty well known, I think: PowerPoint encourages the "foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, a deeply hierarchical single-path structure as the model for organizing every type of content, breaking up narrative and data into slides and minimal fragments, rapid temporal sequencing of thin information rather than focused spatial analysis, conspicuous decoration and Phluff, a preoccupation with format not content, and attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch" (p. 4).
What can Tufte's complaints tell us about writing in electronic environments? First, his focus on PowerPoint as a common tool for producing a particular kind of (multimodal) communication suggests that one of the electronic genres we ought to be thinking about is "overhead presentation."
Second, Tufte's actual complaints suggest that there are better and worse ways to develop this genre. Linda made this point in general in our meeting last semester, I believe: "best practices" exist!
A question we may want to consider is whether it's possible to separate the genre from the tool--to separate overhead presentations from PowerPoint, Keynote, Fireworks, or whatever. In principle, of course, the answer is yes. But, pedagogically, practically, is this the right way to go? (I expect that Linda answers in the affirmative.)
The bigger question, for me, is even more practical. Where do we go to find accountings of rhetorical "best practices" in e- or multimodal genres? I guess we have Tufte's work for presentations, Williams & Tollett (or others) for web design, and Linda's IEDP conventions for asynchronous chat. Who teaches e-mail in terms of conventions? Desktop publishing? Wikis? Blogs? Do we face a problem in emerging (or fast-changing) e-genres? Do situational inflections of particular technologies render talk of conventions too monolithic at the "environmental" level? Is this too much a skill-oriented approach in any event?
That's all for now--more later on symbolic/analytic--
J
Reference
Tufte, E. (2003). The cognitive style of powerpoint. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
posted by jeremiah @ 10:59 AM
7 Comments:
The separating the genre from the tool is always tough for me, especially with "overhead presentations." This points to an issue that the Michigan State crew brought up in a recent CCC article on new media infrastructure. Surrounding each of our classes is a complicated infrastructure that influences the tools and genres, for example, that we can apply in our courses. Pedagogically and practically I have had trouble separating "overhead presentations" from PowerPoint or web authoring from a specific program or word processing from Microsoft Word, etc. The infrastructure within which our courses exits influences how we can teach the environments in 235, perhaps especially 235.
mp
Yes. You're right, and so are the WIDEers.
Does this help any?
Genre focus: we tend to think in terms of writing practices that lead to excellent (even exemplary) texts. The genre focus tends to be text-centric.
Environment focus: we try to isolate composing practices that lead to good results for writers. Here, the focus shifts on to what writers are trying to accomplish by writing in electronic environments.
Want to take that disctinction apart for me? Affirm it?
--J
Also, maybe Linda doesn't answer in the affirmative (see paragraph #4 in my original post)?
--J
Here are some thoughts your distinctions triggered:
Well, regarding genre, I think some people have tried a genre-based approach without being too text-centric. In Miller's "Genre as Social Action" we see some of what you say about environments; practicing and using a genre is targeted towards some action. So, success comes in the form of action, not an excellent document (although the two are not mutually exclusive).
In the environment focus, we are trying to situate a genre focus; we are looking for trasnferability. But this is occuring and overlapping even within an environment. For example, as I create a resume, I use a software program, research other resumes or templates, maybe use Microsoft Word help, convert it to pdf, email/IM friends, reference my personal history, consider whether the resume is scannable (and whether it needs to be), etc. While this environment has an overriding genre creation activity--the resume--it is bound up in an environment that complicates a genre-focus.
mp
Yes again--thanks for the help on my distinction--please explain some more about the one you propose--
J
Here's a little more, although I'm still working through it:
To me, environment points to the networked status of all genres and their production. We seem to follow this in 235 where we don't go genre to genre but environment to environment. We go through different nodes in the larger network of "electronic environments." Those nodes may change--using wikis may replace creating a personal home page--but the overall processes and situations don't change. So, we're trying to help students navigate "electronic environments" whatever that may mean in future situations; we want to give them strategies. And I think this connects us to other WRT courses.
mp
I would definitely not separate the genre from the tool. The tool seems to me to be an inextricable element of the environment, an element that helps to create the writing environment. Certainly, the pencil ushers in a different writing environment than the desktop. I also relate differently to each as a writer, physically and intentionally. Each of those technologies constrains my choices of what I will write (genre?), how, to whom, how i realted to what i write, and even my feeling about how permanent the writing would be.
The problem is the word genre seems too constricting a notion to contain what I see as the effects of the technology on writing. Environment seems more capacious (in Datacloud).
“Do situational inflections of particular technologies render talk of conventions too monolithic at the "environmental" level?” Yes, definitely, especially since the technology keeps changing and thus upsetting the emerging conventions.
“Is this too much a skill-oriented approach in any event? . . .” Maybe so. I view the “skills” part in 235 as in, “How do I up-load files to my site? How do frames work?” etc. The questions of creating text for a web page, its placement, its sizes, its colors, its relation to the images on the page—these are rhetoric and communication questions. The *types* of questions I ask about creating text, the thinking and the activities I seem to be engaged in—these questions take us to the writing environment (as in Datacloud). Maybe I can only access those qusetion through metacognition & observation?
LS
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