Defining Digital Rhetoric

Defining digital rhetoric, for me, is not very different from defining rhetoric in general. I think the main difference between the two, as I expressed today in class, is just the accelerated (or increased ‘velocity’ as Ridolfo and DeVoss would put it) nature of communicating through a digital space. A good analogy to this is a gigantic game of telephone. Each person takes their interpretation of a concept or idea and adds to it certain aspects which are then shared with the next person. These ideas, however, are still human in origin and may be even a better reflection of a true self because judgement is less of a fear when communicating digitally.

Where I found our discussion more interesting, however, was in defining digital. The definitions of rhetoric and digital rhetoric are much the same to me but determining what is actually digital can prove to be quite difficult. Our discussions of the CD and records are of particular interest because in it we can see the progression from a non-digital form into a digital one. This same method can be applied to film and the invention of digital cameras.

The CD, I believe, is a digital medium because, as one of our classmates pointed out, it cannot be played by any other means than digital. The distinction being that a record will produce the sounds that are embedded in it when a needle is run over it and those sounds will be produced at the frequency the needle moves. There is nothing digital required to produce this process. What is interesting to me as a further question is whether records today are digital or physical. They do not need to be played through a digital means, but they are a physical reproduction of a digital recording of a physical production of sound. Does this digital ‘intermediary’ we will call it change the nature of these records? Or are they still physical because of the characteristics discussed above? These questions are nearly impossible to answer but do provoke some interesting thought.