Rice.+What+is+Cool?

=Rice, Jeff. "What Is Cool? Notes on Intellectualism, Popular Culture, and Writing."= //CTheory// (2002). //CTheory.net//. Web. .

Abstract
No abstract.

Argument
Jeff Rice explores what it means to be cool, and examines the meaning of the word throughout American culture. For instance, Rice considers how the term //cool// has been used in magazines, such as //Wired// and //Rolling Stone//, and he discuses electronic culture and how "cool" is represented on the Web. Rice investigates how this notion of "cool" has dominated American culture. Rice argues that, "cool is discourse," explaining, "when the medium become the message." In other words, the discourse utilized in popular and electronic culture and the exchange of information is "cool." Moreover, Rice explains that this notion of cool changes expectations for writing. Rice also explores what "cool" means with regard to intellectualism. For instance, Rice explains that the cool intellectual embraces popular and electronics culture, and engages in the discourses of these cultures rather than withdrawing from culture's exchange of information. Rice mentions how cool is indispensable-- and readily, endlessly, dispensed. Rice discusses how sites like yahoo and netscape put together lists of sites worth visiting which the browser labels as cool sites.

Key Passages
Rice explains, "The places where electronic culture (the Web), intellectualism (Voice of the Shuttle), and consumer culture represented as the generic term popular culture (//Wired// and //Rolling Stone//) merge are where cool dominates our daily lives in ways we have yet to thoughtfully consider."

Rice articulates, "It is the ease and aloofness of what now only really plays with codes, signs, and words, the omnipotence of operational simulation. To whatever extent affects of systems of reference remain, they remain hot. Any "message" keeps us in the hot. We enter the cool era when the medium becomes the message."

Selected Works Cited
Burroughs, William S. //Nova Express//. New York: Grove Press, 1992 (1964). p. 62. Weir, John. "The Beautiful American Word 'Cool.'" //Rolling Stone//. April 2001.p. 67.