Rice.+Networked+Boxes

=Rice, Jeff. "Networked Boxes: The Logic of Too Much."= //College Composition and Communication// 59.2 (2007): 299-311. Print.

Abstract
No abstract.

Argument
Jeff Rice draws upon Janangelo's theory of hypertext as a Cornell Box, in which hypertexts not only create linkages and are nonlinear, but also reassemble the everyday into a space. The Cornell Box theory illustrates writing as a shaping activity. Rice aligns himself with Janangelo because of Janangelo's non-computer-based model for describing new media. Rice highlights Janangelo’s argument that hypertext, unlike traditional writing, does not emphasize focus. Instead, it is never ending and fosters “too much” information. Web writing challenges traditional writing in its vastness. Cornell views the everyday as making up composition, and emphasizing everyday objects as composition. Rice also mentions Geoffrey Sirc, who, like Janangelo, views Cornell’s collections as a metaphor for electronic writing. Sirc argues that students should designers who capture feelings, not essayists who construct concrete truths. Furthermore, Rice posits that teaching new media should stress the formation of relationships among “too much” information, which is ‘in the box.’ This, Rice claims, is the basis of network writing. Rice claims that digital writing is made up of networks much like a Cornell Box, and networks emphasize the relationships between everyday things, events, thoughts, and people.

Key Passages
Rice explains, "Teaching new media writing is a reflection of a cultural condition currently lived, it is 'in the box' " (304).

Rice argues, "Networks encompass connectivity as well as disconnectivity; they shape relations; they circulate relations" (306).

Rice elucidates, "Whereas the page is a space one typically writes to, the box offers a space one writes to and with" (307).

Selected Works Cited
Corder, Jim. "On Argument, What Some Call 'Self Writing,' and Trying to See the Backside of One's Own Eyeballs." Rhetoric Review 22.1 (2003):31-39. Janangelo, Joseph. "Joseph Cornell and the Artistry of Composing Persuasive Hypertexts." College Composition and Communication 49.1 (1998):24-44. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Sirc, Geoffrey. "Box-Logic." Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Ed. Anne Frances Wysocki. Logan: Utah State UP, 2004.