Rhetorical Machines

"This is an edited collection that brings together scholar-practitioners from the fields of rhetoric, computer science, and writing studies to analyze new and unexplored relationships between persuasion and code. This work participates in a long-standing tradition in rhetoric and writing studies that has explored the interconnected nature of technologies and rhetorical practice, while also addressing new approaches to exploring the growing field of computational rhetoric. While computational code is often seen as value-neutral and mechanical, it is in fact inherently rife with the values of those who create it. The underlying--and often unexamined--modes of persuasion that code possesses have powerful ethical and moral implications. From Socrates' critique of writing in Plato's Phaedrus to emerging new media and internet culture, the scholars assembled in this book provide insight into how computation and rhetoric work together to produce social and cultural effects"--