Dr. Karl Stolley (interviewed here, in this clip) is an Associate Professor of Digital Writing & Rhetoric at Illinois Institute of Technology. He "run[s] both a physical lab, known as the Digital Communication Research and Instruction Lab, and complementary virtual lab, known as Gewgaws Lab, that design and investigate open source technologies in communication. In December 2010, [he ] received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching from IIT’s College of Science and letters." Dr. Stolley will join us via Gmail Chat tomorrow (Thursday, 1/31).
Please generate a few questions for Dr. Stolley. Consider our reading (Brummett), the documentary (WLIP, Me @ the Zoo, Catfish, or Secrecy), and your own experience.
For myself, I might want to know:
- How private is private? That is, can we ever really live online and in private? How?
- How is privacy "sold"? That is, when Facebook wants to tout its privacy features, what do these rhetorics look like? How do they circulate? Are they successful?
- Is privacy always already a fantasy? Are our performing selves so mythic and ubiquitous that privacy is a kind of delusion?
- How do you feel, Karl, about how the local media set up this "story"? I see two ladies who appear to be reading a script written by Mark Zuckerberg, himself, with little room for questions or critique. Is this sort of public rhetoric damaging? Harmless? Or is it simply "business, as usual," the story eventually leading back to another, related story to be shown later, on the same network? ...
- Are our concerns regarding privacy being used to sell stories? To direct TV and web traffic?
- What can we do? What should we be doing? How do we disrupt these sorts of public rhetorics? Is play and parody apprpriate? Or, is this a more serious matter?
- How serious is it?
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