Episode 5--An Interview with David Berube

05/13/13 • 52 min

The Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (ARST) celebrated 20 years in 2012. The ARST Oral History Project was conceived to document the institutional history of the organization and the larger intellectual history of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine. This interview, with David Berube, Professor from North Carolina State University, features: *The necessity of propaedeutic translation, especially for fringe and emergent sciences *The risks of mindless metaphors *Why the rhetoric of technology has less visibility *Concern about the "woe is us" attitude *On making strategic decisions about audience *Why staying on top of the science means you might never read fiction again *The inevitable frustrations that accompany trying to influence policymakers *Why avoiding the "r" word helps gain credibility in policy and industry circles *How being a rhetorician of science makes one a good rhetorician in front of scientific audiences *Contemplating the rhetoric of science as a lens to analyze search algorithms *The importance of culturally sensitive analysis of social media *What does it mean to sample Twitter meaningfully for sentiment analysis? *The importance of the screw-on lid *Re-branding rhetoric of science and technology *The importance of being relevant

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Episode 4--An Interview with Randy Allen Harris

The Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (ARST) celebrated 20 years in 2012. The ARST Oral History Project was conceived to document the institutional history of the organization and the larger intellectual history of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine. This interview, with Randy Harris, Professor at the University of Waterloo, features discussion of: *how cognitive structuring patterns shape how we argue, think, and believe *on being drawn into rhetoric of science through coincidence *why anything involving John Campbell tends toward the memorable *how Gaonkar got it all wrong, but why the Gaonkar affair was good for business *on rhetoric vs. communication of science, and why Thomas Kuhn was horrified about the "r" word *why doing good work under the rubric of rhetoric will bring the philosophers, historians, and sociologists around *how the relationships of theorists, rather than theories, create the perception of incommensurability *on science as a symbol system, and how rhetoric ought to be the fundamental discipline to investigate it *what rhetoric adds to studies of science and what science adds to rhetoric *on rhetoric of science, emergent technologies, cognitive styles, and orality *why picking up cognitive directions in rhetoric of science would be useful

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Episode 6--An Interview with Judy Segal

The Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (ARST) celebrated 20 years in 2012. The ARST Oral History Project was conceived to document the institutional history of the organization and the larger intellectual history of the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine. This interview, with Judy Segal, Professor at the University of British Columbia, features: *Why the terms of debate constrain arguments about public health policy *How public values get taken up in private bodies *Being troubled by early experience with technical writing *The usefulness of pedagogical collaboration in early ARST meetings *How the development of the rhetoric of medicine hit an exponential growth rate *The methodological turn in rhetoric of medicine *Why the rhetoric of medicine is particularly conducive to public engagement *Navigating humanities, medicine studies, and medical humanities *How rhetoric of medicine can make a contribution beyond logography *Why the internet has become a locus for illness narratives and how it has changed research methods *How analyzing rhetorical situations young academics find themselves in can help generate good advice