I began this project with the idea that my dissertation is ultimately an odd and well-documented personal essay, an exploration to suit my own needs and questions regarding the practices of discourse within late twentieth-century technology, and the dramatic speed of communications that I think problematizes our conceptions of how rhetoric works. I'd like to conclude in this chapter by summarizing and reflecting on my exploration and by suggesting some possible future applications. As I noted in the closing pages of the introduction of my dissertation, the implications of immediacy in general and the immediate rhetorical situations of the Internet in particular are rich with dangers and potentials that we need to be speaking about in classrooms at all levels and in communities, both real and "virtual."
To situate my examination of how rhetorical situations and contexts need to be reconfigured as a result of communication technologies like the Internet, I began with the first contemplators of the "right" time and place, the ancient Greeks. As I note in chapter one, kairos is an ideal represented metaphorically as a thread passing through the loom when it is properly opened, as an archer who must exercise the proper force on the bow string and good aim to hit the target, and even as a god with a long lock of hair to symbolize the need of grabbing opportunity by the forelock. Kairos is also explained and exemplified in Plato's and Gorgias' conceptions of the role of rhetoric, and while both see kairos as a necessary component for discourse to be effective, the source and ultimate impact of kairos for each differs dramatically. Plato saw kairos as an opportunity that needed to be discovered by rhetors (who also needed to know every aspect of the souls of their audience members) in order to convey a discourse that approached a transcendent Truth. In other words, kairos for Plato was a means to an end, and a means that was frequently misused by sophists and those who didn't know better, like the young Phaderus. On the other hand, because Gorgias assumed there was no transcendent Truth to which rhetors or audiences could appeal, kairos was necessarily the creation of rhetors as a result of their mastery over "logos" or speech. Further, again because Gorgias assumed there was no Truth in the Platonic sense, any act of persuasion was relative and dependent on the constraints of the time and place of the speech act, of its kairos.
This epistemological/ontological disparity was taken up by modern rhetoricians, most notably by Lloyd Bitzer and Richard Vatz. And once again, we had essentially the same dichotomy: Bitzer argued that rhetorical situations were discovered by rhetors, filled with appropriate and "true" discourse and were therefore objectively observable and verifiable as "truth," while Vatz argued that rhetorical situations were always solely the products of the rhetors who created them and that the appropriateness of the discourse and actions that result were always relative.
However, as I point out in the beginning of chapter two, all four of these rhetoricians are making similar assumptions about the constituents of rhetorical situations. Plato, Gorgias, Bitzer, and Vatz all assume that the components of rhetorical situations can be broken up into discreet units (rhetor, audience, message, etc.), and that the channel of communication from rhetor to audience is singular and direct. Further, they all assume rhetorical situations are themselves separable from one another, function in a definitive physical and literal time and place, and involve the participation of individuals who are "wholly contained" selves capable of autonomously sending or receiving messages.
These assumptions are problematized by immediacy, which assumes a postmodern framework. As I define it in chapter two, postmodernism rejects the assumptions of modernism--that is, in its negation of transcendent truths, postmodernism questions the modernistic concept that ideals like "democracy," "justice," and "humanity" are universally applicable and consistent. Instead, postmodernism presumes transcendent truths are artificial, ideals like "democracy," "justice," and "humanity" are local, and meanings are unstable and influenced by complex and frequently contradictory cultural, political, and ideological forces. As such, postmodernism doesn't presume a transcendent and autonomous "self," but suggests that identity is multiplicitious and dependent on other individuals and cultures. As I also explained in chapter two, my definition of postmodernism assumes that it is a far-reaching phenomenon--that is, postmodernism is the condition of contemporary American culture--and that the implications of postmodernism are both reasonably interpreted as determental and favorable. While many critics and theorists see the postmodern condition as one that society needs to escape, many others suggest that postmodernism's breakdown of previous hierarchies offers tremendous opportunities.
Immediacy assumes these postmodern conditions and suggests that the dichotomy between Plato/Bitzer and Gorgias/Vatz is problematic. To further illustrate and explain immediacy, I offered more detailed examinations of theories from the postmodern/poststructualist critics Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard. Although typically not seen as closely related, I argued that together, Derrida's writings on diffé rance and signification, Foucault's analysis of the cultural, social, and ideological effects on discourse, and Baudrillard's critiques of contemporary media technologies and simulations and simulacras inform a definition of immediacy as it is related to rhetorical situations.
While I assume classical and modernistic categories (such as "rhetor," "audience," and "message"), my conception of immediacy begins with the premise that the origins, the boundaries, the distinctive nature of these categories, and the individuals who participate in situations are fragmented, fluid, indeterminate, and dynamic. As such, the "right" or "critical time" of kairos and modern conceptions of rhetorical situations are not neatly located in either an objectively observable and pre-existing "cause" discovered by rhetors or in an opportunity created by rhetors; rather, the "right" or "critical time" is simultaneously present in a number of sites within rhetorical situations and is made apparent by the context of the situations themselves. As a result, I suggested in the close of chapter two that immediate rhetorical situations are volatile and contextually-based because, like the postmodern condition that frames it, immediacy holds the potential for confusion and chaos between the constituents of rhetorical situations, and, simultaneously, intimacy and affinity among the previously excluded.
With this working definition of immediate rhetorical situations in mind, I then moved on to offer a brief explanation and definition of the Internet, one of the prime examples and creators of immediate rhetorical situations. While it is constantly changing, the Internet is made up of many international computer networks that transfer and share electronic information among millions of host computers. Originally begun as a US Department of Defense project, the Internet has since grown so large as to be out of the control of any one governmental, social, or political entity. There are a wide variety of tasks that individual users can perform on the Internet, though I have limited my exploration here to the components E-mail, Listservs, USENET Newsgroups, Gopher Space, and the World Wide Web.
After I explained these components in some detail, I closed chapter three with a discussion regarding the demographics of the Internet. While there are an ever-increasing number of individuals around the world who are getting on-line, the Internet community is still mostly composed of white male Americans in their early thirties who have above-average incomes. I think this is important because it contextualizes my arguments regarding the implications of the Internet as an example of immediate rhetorical situations as I discussed them in chapter four. Further, as I will discuss in a few pages, I think the problems of limited access to the Internet necessitate the need to work harder at insuring futue Internet access for a larger portion of the population.
With both immediate rhetorical situations and the Internet workably defined, I more closely examined the Internet as both an example and creator of immediate rhetorical situations in chapter four. Internet components like listservs and USENET newsgroups facilitate and encourage situations in which multiple rhetors and audiences participate, dramatically problematizing the origins of discourse and the definitions of "rhetor" and "audience" presumed of classical and modern rhetorical situations. The wide-reaching interconnectivity of the WWW and Gopher Space problematize the boundaries and categories of rhetorical situations because all texts are potentially accessible and linked by rhetors/audience members. I also point out that the Internet negates such basic modernistic assumptions as literal time and place and "wholly contained" selves. Finally, I argue that the immediate rhetorical situations exemplified and created by the Internet have volatile implications which need to be examined contextually and with fluidity. We cannot determine whether or not any discourse on the Internet is "good" or "bad" by appealing to an objective or universal truth that governs the situation; rather, the implications of discourse within the immediate rhetorical situations of the Internet must be contextualized and examined as being simultaneously dangerous and dynamic, confusing and intimate.
Given this, what can be said regarding this theory of immediacy as it applies to rhetorical situations in general and to the Internet in particular? First, I think my work here shows that the neglected concept of kairos (as James Kinneavy describes it) and the contemporary theories of rhetorical situation (which also have of late received little attention) are closely related to one another and are still important starting points for theorizing on the parts and functions of discourse. But I think these theories are made more applicable when they are reconfigured within the context of postmodern and poststructualist theories. That is of course what I have tried to do here in a small and personal way, but clearly there are many more opportunities for revisiting the concept of rhetorical situation.
I also think viewing the Internet as an immediate rhetorical situation makes it clear that this indeed is a new and unique discursive space--that is, whatever the Internet may or may not be, it clearly changes the rules of how discourse functions. This is not necessarily as obvious as it may seem. For example, in Michael Spooner's and Kathleen Yancey's dialog concerning e-mail as a genre, the "not a genre" position argues that "we are seeing a transition in the technology that delivers our written genres, not an innovation in genre themselves. And, in our enthusiasm for the (mere) technology, we are mistaking transition for innovation" (262, parentheses theirs). In fact, this side of the argument goes, there is nothing different about e-mail writing and the kind of writing done between pen-pals (except the exchange is much slower with pen and paper)(268), and that e-mail is "merely a kind of tablet with courier attached. As such, it serves only to deliver extant genres more efficiently than we could deliver them before. . . "(274-5).
As I suggest in chapter four, I have some questions and problems with the goals and needs to label e-mail a "genre." But beyond that, I hope my dissertation has clearly refuted the argument that there is "nothing new" about the Internet on several grounds. First, as my first two chapters suggest, the epistemological and ontological assumptions framing classical and modern rhetorical situations differ radically from the assumptions of postmodern rhetorical situations. Second, as my third and fourth chapters argue, the Internet (including e-mail) exemplifies and creates rhetorical situations that are not effectively viewed solely through classical or modernistic theories of discourse. A modernist theory of rhetorical situation cannot, for example, explain how a rhetorical situation functions when everyone simultaneously speaks and listens and which does not take place in a particular physical time or place.
Besides, as many have argued before, discourse is always closely related to and transformed by the technology that delivers it. For example, Walter Ong argues in his landmark study Orality and Literacy that "Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness, and never more than when they affect the word" (82). Perhaps Jay David Bolter overstates the case when he argues in Writing Space that electronic publishing will replace our understanding of conventional print, and surely the popular Internet advocate John Perry Barlow overstates the argument when he says (as he has frequently) that the Internet is the "most transforming technological event since the capture of fire" (Harper's, August 1995, 36). But the Internet is clearly different than traditional print. Computer technology like the Internet, as Eugene F. Provenzo writes in his essay "The Electronic Panopticon," is not neutral and transparent "because it gives an individual, or a group of people, means by which to act that would otherwise not be possible" (181).
I think that once we view the Internet as substantially different from conventional print (because of the arguments I present here regarding immediate rhetorical situations, for example), we need to also to recognize that the Internet reconfigures the definitions and goals of "literacy." Again, this is not necessarily an obvious position. As Myron C. Tuman points out in the introduction to his collection Literacy Online, many rhetoricians and teachers see "technology" as separate from a definition of "literacy"; in fact, "technology" frequently represents a barrier that must be overcome in the process of teaching literacy. Tuman opens his essay by arguing that E.D. Hirsch, certainly one of the most vocal and conservative advocates of a particular type of literacy, sees computer technology as part of the "disease" of culture for which literacy is the cure. Hirsch argues (as quoted by Tuman) that, "advancing technology, with its constant need for fast and complex communications, has made literacy more essential to commerce and domestic life" (3). Tuman suggests though that this relationship is just the opposite: "Advancing technology, with its increasing ability to provide fast and natural communications of text, voice, and graphics, has simplified the literacy skills essential for commerce and domestic life" (4).
The technology of the Internet can certainly aid our current concepts of literacy and can facilitate a rich and engaging pedagogy, as Tuman says here, but I'd argue that it goes further than that. As Provenzo suggests, "Literacy in a post-typographic culture requires us to be acutely aware of the medium through which we 'read' the culture and society around us. In doing so, we must understand at the most fundamental level the potential of the computer to create conditions for both good and evil--both freedom and control" (171). It is no longer enough for teachers simply to be aware of computer technologies like the Internet and attempt to incorporate them into a literacy curriculum; rather, we should recognize that an awareness of the technology we use to "read" and "write" is inseparability part of literacy. In other words, teaching literacy means teaching computer skills and an awareness of how computer technologies effect us individually and collectively, just as we do with "traditional" language skills.
As Lester Faigley discusses in Fragments of Rationality, "computer technologies . . . have created new possibilities for writing and for the teaching of writing" (166), but Internet technologies also problematize our traditional assumptions about what it means to teach the literacy skills of reading and writing. Faigley writes at length about the "achieved Utopia" (as he describes it) of the networked classroom and the problems that resulted from his own experiences in teaching with computers. For example, the modernistic legacy of teaching students to write about their "authentic selves" is difficult to teach and learn in a computer networked environment where students can easily "try on and exchange identities" (191). His own conclusions here about this experience are mixed, but Faigley does call for a need to "theorize at greater depth" about the implications of this transformed pedagogy. "While electronic discourse explodes the belief in a stable unified self, it offers a means of exploring how identity is multiply constructed and how agency resides in the power of connecting with others and building alliances" (199). I think this theorizing must begin with the premise that the rhetorical situations where discourse is practiced on the Internet are radically different from those of traditional print. As such, how we conceive of and teach literacy that includes awareness of the Internet must also be different. Literacy on the Internet must involve exploring the multiplicity between rhetors and audiences, understanding the fragmentation of selves in both good and bad ways, and recognizing the possibilities of simultaneously confusing and intimate communications between participants.
To foster this new conception of literacy, I think it's also important for teachers, community activists, and other "literacy workers" to try to extend access to the Internet to wider segments of the population. As I noted in chapter three, a significant part of the access problem right now can be simply explained by the fact that computer technology--both the hardware and the software--is expensive and complicated. Relatively few Americans have the disposable income to purchase the computer systems that cost $1500 or more, which allow them to make Internet connections from home. Of course even fewer citizens in third world countries have these resources.
But the other part of the problem of access, who will be allowed access and what will they be able to do on the Internet in the future, is perhaps even more significant. In a February 1996 interview in WIRED magazine, Steve Jobs (who was instrumental in creating the Apple Macintosh computer) suggested without a hint of irony or cynicism that the future of the World Wide Web will not be about people sharing information, self-publishing, or democracy; rather, the future of the World Wide Web will be about selling products. If this prediction proves to be true, then I think that much of the Internet is in danger of becoming like television: a medium of great communicative promise where access is controlled by corporations whose only concern is the sale of more consumer goods.
The first part of this problem--who has access to the Internet--has been improving for quite some time now. While still not as high as they should be, the number of new Internet users worldwide continues to increase at an astronomical rate, and the cost of gaining access continues to decrease. Many public libraries are providing access to computers and Internet accounts to patrons, and communities all over the country are setting up community-based systems for getting on-line. For example, here in Bowling Green, Ohio we have the "Wood County Freenet," where local citizens can get virtually unlimited Internet access for $30 a year. Further, as the cost of hardware and software drops, more individuals and schools will be able to afford to get on-line. Part of the job of teaching literacy on the Internet will involve pursing programs like these that make the access to computer hardware and software a reality for as many people as possible, and also providing instruction in how to understand and communicate with this new medium. These and similar efforts are especially important for reaching segments of the population that are underrepresented on the Internet. But perhaps an even more important role of literacy workers in this "immediate future" will be to raise consciousness so that individual users recognize that the implications of communication on the Internet go far beyond advertising new products. We need to continue to examine and focus on the radical possibilities for individual participation on the Internet in order to ensure that full access is not replaced by a system where the WWW is nothing but an endless series of commercials. We need to teach users about the problems of this discursive space, where there are no easy and definitive answers and where the promotion of democracy depends on an understanding of the fluditity of the Internet's rhetorical situations. Finally, we need to teach new users to realize that the Internet also represents an opportunity to practice a new type of literacy that encourages readers to actively seek and make meaning, that offers chances for users to explore their multiplicitious identities, and that facilitates unique and intimate communications.
Ultimately, my goal with this exploration of immediacy as it applies to rhetorical situations has been about reconfiguring questions. As I suggested in the close of my introduction, the questions of immediacy are similar to the questions Laurie Anderson raises in her song "Same Time Tomorrow": "Is time long or is it wide?" I don't have an easy answer to that question or the questions of immediacy. But I hope that by asking these challenging questions about immediate rhetorical situations, I have exposed new possibilities for discourse.