Katherine's Class Annotated Bibliography Contribution

Barker, Simon. “The End of Argument: Knowledge and the Internet.” Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2000): 154-181. Web.

In this article, Barker argues that the use of computers will lead to an acceptance of informality when introducing arguments. He makes the case that the idealization of rigorous academics is related to writing because writing eliminates the ephemeral and multimodal nature of speech (which allows audiences to see the final version of an idea without being distracted by potential side meanings in voice inflection, body language, facial expressions, etc) and gives spatial forms to ideas (making it easier to see connections between thoughts). Even though many scholars (for example, mathematicians) value two-way communication in transmitting knowledge, in order to have something published, they must produce a final, static text. With the Internet, though, texts are no longer confined to a sequential, discrete collection of physical pages. Writers can add hyperlinks that allow readers to immediately access entire texts (which, according to Barker, turns citations into “associations” rather than pieces of evidence). They can also make revisions to a text after it has been published and read by an audience. As a result, texts are no longer permanent, and arguments no longer need to be introduced as fully formed rigorous strings of logic. A video of a mathematician explaining the proof to Fermat’s Last Theorem can replace a rigorous formal written proof, bringing the advancement of mathematical knowledge back to its “lecture theatre or tea room” roots.

I want to apply Barker to my question about what makes argument effective on networks within Tumblr. Much of what I see on Tumblr seems to be trying to bridge the gap between writing and speaking: the over-exaggerated use of all caps, diction, and punctuation to capture a tone, and the use of gifs to provide facial cues (albeit, of celebrities or cartoons) that would otherwise be lacking from a written conversation. I can apply Barker’s ideas about computers being a hybrid between speech and writing to explain why the posts that are most commonly shared and engaged with on sites like Tumblr tend to make arguments that are more emotionally than rigorously defended.