Complex Worlds: Digital Culture, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication (Technical Communication Series) (Baywood's Technical Communication Series)
Complex Worlds: Digital Culture, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication offers readers a blend of theoretical and practical content that is sure to capture the attention of professional communicators working in both academic and professional settings. Its eleven chapters, written in clear and engaging scholarly prose, cover an impressively diverse range of subject matter, including agricultural communication, Web 2.0 journalism, Web resumes, and XML authoring for technical communicators. The contributions are remarkably well focused around the major themes addressed in the introduction, covering each of these themes in depth. Readers can expect to walk away with a deep understanding of the complexity of issues such as digital divergence and a broad grasp of various disciplinary, theoretical, and political perspectives on such issues. --Amy Koerber, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric, Texas Tech University, Editor, Technical Communication QuarterlyThis provocative collection asks us to complicate those machine-is-us mantras of Web 2.0 convergence (and their mirror image in essentializing assumptions about the digital divide ) that so far have set the tone for thinking about new media s impact on the classroom or other communities of engaged practice. As a teacher of professional communication, I am excited by the probing questions Complex Worlds raises about digital access, technological literacy and authorship, and online activism, advocacy, and agency. I am also heartened by its many practical applications for producing and/or thinking critically about citizen journalism, online resumes, electronic mailing lists, and collaborative writing projects that can be designed to cross not just classroom but also national and socioeconomic boundaries. I look forward to incorporating this collection s insights, examples, and pedagogical challenges into my classes. --Ryan Jerving, Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Marquette UniversityComplex Worlds offers readers a strong sense of the range of issues that occupy the attention of digital technology scholars in English studies. The essays in this collection address such timely concerns as agency, governance, globalization, and cyberactivism. The breadth of the collection is considerable, and readers will be rewarded with a new, distinct perspective in each chapter. Whether interested in digital communication in the professions, distributed collaborations, classrooms, or society more broadly construed, readers will find something in this collection to stimulate their thinking. --Mark Zachry, University of Washington