Reviews for Construction Technology Today and Tomorrow/Sample Package

The average rating for Construction Technology Today and Tomorrow/Sample Package based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-04-09 00:00:00 Richard Smith In Critical Literacy in a Digital Era (2002), Barbara Warnick analyzes a variety of Internet discourses rhetorically in order to promote a critical literacy that might enable stronger public discourse online. She understands literacy broadly, to include oral, digital, print, visual, and media literacy, and understands critical literacy as rhetorical: "Rhetorical criticism complements all of these forms of literacy insofar as each of them is concerned with the social construction of meaning through symbolic action. It focuses on making the invisible (which is transparent and unnoticed) visible" (7). Additionally, a critically literate citizen understands most communication online as persuasive, as rhetorical (14). Through her analysis of Wired magazine, Warnick argues that the dominant ideology regarding technology today is new libertarianism, which values free market, progress, a belief in science, and U.S. preeminence (8-10). The rhetoric of Wired is largely laudatory or epideictic, rather than deliberative, and promotes a white, male subject. She also explores how arguments toward women trying to include them in the Internet in the 1990s often appealed to masculine traits, valuing "aggressiveness, opportunism, and technical proficiency" (17). In her analysis of political parody online, comparing the parodies in 1996 to the ones in 2000, Warnick notes an increasing control of users' movement online, with attempts to keep visitors on certain sites. She writes that "the Internet . . . has become increasingly more commercialized and less egalitarian as it has grown and become more structured" (120). Warnick argues that the technological elites often control the discourse about the Internet, through their ability to name themselves (e.g., Digital Citizen), name those amongst themselves as models, and using dichotomies to simplify discourse (e.g., techno-savvy vs. Luddite) (116-117). Much of the discourse online seems to attract people who agree with the values of those sites, and participation often seems to be "simulated rather than actual" (119). Warnick concludes that counter narratives to libertarian claims are needed, narratives that are in-between utopian claims and rejection claims (the latter of which do not carry much salience with society) (124-125).

Review # 2 was written on 2012-02-14 00:00:00 Bradley Huggins I may be unfairly biased against this book because it wasn't relevant to my specific project, but I was far enough into it that I had to finish reading. This is a good book. It's important to talk about critical thinking in technology, because it's so easy to see technology as increasingly "invisible" as media become more widespread. When Warnick was writing, and in the time of the cases she was studying, technology was still about the elite. The Internet was more about science and math nerds than it was online shopping, watching Hulu, and blogs, blogs, blogs. The Internet was still about the specialist. Now that we're all on board, the need for critical literacy is far greater to keep us from joining the cheerleading team. MVQ (most valuable quote): "A rhetorical middle course much be steered between uncritical enthusiams for the new technologies and bleak rejection of them. Uncritical enthusaismm encourages unthinking acceptance, whereas bleak rejection paints a picture that is doomed to be rejected by the public. Intelligent discussion of issues related to Internet policy is what is needed" (125).