Rhetoric of Science and Technology Series

In Suasive Iterations, Rieder argues that in order to engage persuasively with audiences today, digital rhetors and (distant) writers must break through the screen-based looking glass of the PC era that persists in our fields. The PC era normed us to the idea that the virtual realm of the computer is separate and distinct from our “real,” everyday world.  Yet the new, post-PC era of physical computing is now replacing the screen, keyboard, and mouse, producing engagements in which the virtual and the real are combined, leading to an ever-growing range of experiences between the self and the world. Rieder argues that to persuade or move an audience today, rhetors and writers must invent experiences that “evert” the virtual and the real in novel ways. This creative process begins with “transductive” and stylistic uses of the sensors, actuators, and microprocesses that are the building blocks of this new era of popular computing.

“Suasive Iterations pushes the definitions of writing in ways both theoretically and practically sophisticated. The connection to physical computing pushes this approach in a new and innovative direction, providing a platform for the field to think about the relationship between/among the physical, the virtual, and the rhetorical in writing studies. This work is poised to propel the field in ways that some will find quite uncomfortable, but it makes a very strong case for its argument. Suasive Iterations will likely be a key reading in digital rhetoric and computers and composition courses as well as for the broader range of audiences in the digital humanities and digital media arts.”
—Douglas Eyman, George Mason University

David M Rieder is Associate Professor of English, Associate Director of the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media PhD program at North Carolina State University.