Brummett and Emig: Unrelated Relevance

Knowledge and writing.  The acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, and the recorded set of symbols.  

How do these subjects become intertwined with the subject of technology?

Knowledge seems to lend itself to a connection with tech.  For the methodological rhetoric buffs of Barry Brummett's "Three Meanings of Epistemic Rhetoric," technology helps to facilitate any and all of the processes involved in the systematic approach to finding out things about stuff.  

Electron microscopes.  Satellites.  Audio tuners.  CERN's Large Hadron Collider (What?  Look it up.)

Technology gives a voice to the ambitions and desires of the infinitely curious, those who wish to "discover a world waiting to be found" (Brummett 1).  To such individuals, technology is crucial in forming knowledge because the very tools used to define reality have already been invented and defined by mankind.  As inventors and engineers seek to perfect technology, methodological thinkers "search for perfection in knowledge" (Brummett 3); here the connection is more obvious, seeing as methodological thinkers believe in the absolute version of knowledge through discovery while technology also works to examine and display truth and information. 


  
But what about writing?  Is there a relation between written words and thingamajigs?  Janet Emig, like Brummett, has a method of knowledge (inquiry paradigms, she calls them) which mirrors the purpose and intent of technology called "conventional inquiry."   Inquiry paradigms such as the Scientific Method blatantly represent the desires of technology to advance and investigate.  So what methods of writing technology fall under this category?

Well, seeing as Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, Vimeo, and others are included under "thingamajigs," one would be inclined to say "yes."

Even with the early innovations of wires and morse code, communication on a local and international level began to increase through the use of technology.  Blogs, electronic books, articles, journals, allows for the transmission and easy access of written words through the use of the Internet.  History and culture expressed through language is just a mouse-click away.  The aforementioned social media provide myriad outlets through which one can voice an opinion for the world to hear.  Such inventions amplify the characteristics of communication that remain relevant in modern society. 

So those professors teaching on technology/digital media who include Brummet and Emig in their respective classes can rest easy knowing that they have not led their students astray.