This Rhetorical Life: The Loving Embrace of the Old
Podcast:
On this installment of This Rhetorical Life, we examine David Edgerton’s refiguring of technological historiography in terms of his viewpoint’s effect on social media and the family, as dramatized in the film Summer Wars.
(16 votes)
Comments
Family and Rhetorical Strategy
What a great finale to this semester’s podcast series! I always enjoy the way you structure and edit your podcast to resemble an ongoing radio show (speaking of old and new technologies!). This format allows you to have a distinguishable style and ensures an open and ongoing dialogue. As for the content of this podcast, your use of the film Summer Wars really helps expand my thinking about Edgerton’s claims. The application of his arguments to social arenas like the “family” not only informs the user-based history that Edgerton speaks of but also links (in my mind) to Lindy’s discussion of the rhetorical narrative in her podcast for this week, “Kenyan Technologies in Use.” In her podcast, she examines some Kenyan technologies that rely on and take advantage of “context, time, community, and available materials.” It is interesting to think about how the family unit, as presented in your podcast and existing in the virtual world, can rely on and take advantage of these things as well. Not only do the individuals in the clip you shared from Summer Wars work together as a family unit for productive means, but it is helpful to think about the way family units function and exist on the web in social arenas due to issues of “context, time, community, and available materials.” Many examples (especially examples relating to Facebook) come to mind that support the idea that traditional family functions like supporting each other, disciplining, regulating, etc. remain prevalent due to virtual change. Now family members can be linked on Facebook and these functions can benefit because of the Facebook community, the different concept of time (ex. members of family can communicate on web when face-to-face interaction is not possible), the different context (online versus face-to-face), and available materials. Awesome podcast!
Cheers!
Family vs. Social Networking
I was actually pleasantly suprised by this podcast. Listening to how the family related to social media was rather eye-opening and heartwarming to hear that despite social networks, the family still holds strong. Having not actually seen the film "Summer Wars", I followed along with your podcast quite easily. The way you tied everything together was effective and worked well. The battle of the family against the virtual world and the virus that threatens to tear it apart is a great example of Edgerton’s ideas of the old and new and user-centered historiographies. The family is an idea that has been around for thousands of years and has overcome many obstacles, not the first of which is social media. The fact that it survives beyond social media just goes to show that it is a very powerful technology that will probably be around for the next thousand years. It is one of those technologies (if the family can actually be considered a technology) that will always have a place anywhere on Edgerton’s timeline, while social media might have only a relatively small spot. As always, this is a well done podcast. Being a new-found fan of Japanese animation, I am tempted to put "Summer Wars" on my Netflix queue now.