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Marconi's Wireless and the Rhetoric of a New Technology

  • Book
  • © 2012

Overview

Authors:
  1. Aaron A. Toscano

    1. Department of English, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA

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  • Describes how a technology, specifically the wireless, adheres to cultural values
  • Provides the first rhetorical analysis of Marconi's wireless explaining how this historical technology fits modernist values of the early 20th century
  • Shows how to apply a rhetorical lens to new technologies
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Sociology (BRIEFSSOCY)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xx
    Download chapter PDF

  2. The Rhetoric of Technical Communication

    • Aaron A. Toscano
    Pages 1-30

  3. Analyzing Technology to Uncover Social Values, Attitudes, and Practices

    • Aaron A. Toscano
    Pages 31-55

  4. Marconi’s Representations of the Wireless

    • Aaron A. Toscano
    Pages 57-85

  5. Popular Press Representations of Marconi’s Wireless

    • Aaron A. Toscano
    Pages 87-107

  6. Tropes of Progress in F. T. Marinetti’s Early Futurist Texts

    • Aaron A. Toscano
    Pages 109-130

  7. Conclusion—STS and Technical Communication: Expansive Possibilities

    • Aaron A. Toscano
    Pages 131-133

  8. Notes

    • Aaron A. Toscano
    Pages 135-145
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Keywords

About this book

This book examines the discourse surrounding the wireless, created by the Anglo-Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. The wireless excited early twentieth-century audiences before it even became a viable black box technology. The wireless adhered to modernist values—speed, efficiency, militarization, and progress. Language surrounding the wireless is a form of technical communication, overlooked by today’s practitioners. This book establishes a broader definition for technical communication by examining a selection of the discourse surrounding Marconi's wireless. The book’s main themes are the following: 1) technical communication is all discourse surrounding technology, 2) the field of technical communication (or technical writing) should incorporate analyses of discourse surrounding technologies into its epistemology, 3) the wireless is a product of the society from which it comes (early twentieth-century Western civilization), and 4) the discourse surrounding the wireless is infused with tropes of progress—speed, efficiency, evolution, and ahistoricity.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of English, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA

    Aaron A. Toscano

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