Weekly Blog Post 2

The opening sequence of the sped up erasing of the words on paper contained a powerful message. This scene effectively shows the mixing of the past and present. The graphite words on the blank sheet of white paper are representative of how in the recent past most writing was executed. But the way that this image is displayed in the sped up video sequence hints at how text is communicated today. As the video progresses, it gives way to text appearing in search engines and HTML's. This juxtaposition of the past versus the present was one of the most apparent themes within the video- how the internet is broadening and expanding our view of rhetoric. These changes have come swift and hard. We have gone from putting pen (or pencil) to paper to using other mediums as forms of text- from email to Facebook to blogging. These new forms of text add to the ways that an audience can experience writing. It can come to the recipient from far away, in the case of email, and be waiting in the virtual world for them to receive and respond. But it can also come instantaneously and be returned just as fast, or just sit and wait for an audience to come along in the wide abyss that is the World Wide Web. The type of word usage has also changed with how we are communicating- words are being shortened for quick exchange and sentences are being chopped for the same purpose. This type of communication seems very temporary and fleeting as compared to the permanence of words in pen on paper.

Even though the internet is changing the way that text and communication is dealt with in society, many parts of the writing process for this medium have remained the same. As we prepare ourselves to write, whether it is in a blog or in a college-ruled notebook, we still consider the same things- our purpose, audience and their location, and an angle from which to approach our topic. And, as we sit down to write we still consider how we are going to organize our piece and how we want it to function. The flow of words makes the same progression from a sentence to a paragraph to a couple of paragraphs to a final product. The editing portion of the writing process has been made easier with the use of copy and paste within a word document and at times the words seem to flow easier with the typing motions on a computer keyboard. But all in all, it seems that rhetoric still remains an organic process of idea progression no matter where the writing is done (whether on a computer screen or a piece of paper).