“Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies”
Jenny Edbauer
Jenny Edbauer talks about the word city and how using the word as a verb, rather than a noun, is a better way to encompass what a city is. She further explains that
“…cities are more about movements and processes than the elements that materially construct their borders.”
Edbauer, 11
This quote points to the notion that a city is more than its physical qualities. She uses her example of Austin, but it made me think about New York. New York is nothing but a concrete jungle without its processes. The physical city, Manhattan in particular, is literally an island, so it is contained within a specific space. When speaking of the idea of a situation, she says that
“the social does not reside within fixed sites, but rather in a networked space of flows and connections” (9).
These two quotes put together led me to a question of a homocentric world.The idea that the world is based on human relationship is actually quite beautiful when you really ponder it. For us, it is impossible to imagine a world without human interaction, and if we do, it is scary.
For example, when you are in New York City late at night, everyone can agree that it is better to walk where there are many people. While we do this for safety reasons, we also find the idea of an abandoned street extremely offputting. Why? Because we don’t know what the processes and interactions there look like. Edbauer even talks about this on page 11 when talking about the “good” and “bad” parts of a city. However, I also think of the Old Hollywood movie archetype of the Ghost Town. Those movies may not be classified as horror, but there is definitely something eerie about the idea of losing the culture and day-to-day life of a place (a situation, if you will).
Stemming from that, my question is this: Do you think that the reason that digital storage, such as Google Drive, iCloud, Office365, and even sites such as Facebook, has become something we depend on so heavily because of the fear of forgetting? Is there something scary about the idea of losing memories?
May you find love and light!
Theresa
Caritas et Lux 
Hey Theresa!
This speaks to me. I am a data hoarder. I’m a minimalist physically, but digitally—Holy cannoli. I’ve got hard drives on clouds on clouds of redundancy. But I’m still scared of losing them.
Part of that probably comes from when my dad died in 2014, and I’m grasping at things like old pictures from my camera roll in an attempt to have a firm grasp on reality–in a way to say that I’m in control of my life in some way, whereas when Dad was gone, he was gone. And sad story: I really don’t have a lot of pictures of him, and maybe 2 or 3 videos that aren’t on VHS.
So that’s my case, but on another (happier) side of things… Memories are moments of time I can’t get back. Like my wife and I have done sooooooo much stuff together and taken so many pictures. But pictures are the closest we can get to reliving those memories, and they just don’t do the memories justice.
Also–yeah I have terabytes of pictures and videos from my past, but do I ever revisit them? Of course not. Who does?
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