Working Through Surveillance And Technical Communication

What is surveillance, and why should we care? Why are those who use technology susceptible to being both agents and targets of contemporary surveillance practices? Working Through Surveillance and Technical Communication addresses these questions, discussing what it means to engage in surveillance, examining why this participation may be problematic, and offering entry points into assessing one's ethical and socially just involvement with surveillance. Further, the book suggests ways to resist both individually and collectively, and it offers pedagogical entry points for those looking to talk about surveillance with others. Led by the central questions, "How are technical communicators also surveillance workers?" and "Why does this matter for technical communication and surveillance scholarship?" the text uses the example of Edward Snowden to illustrate how technical communicators and surveillance workers exist on an often-overlapping range. Sarah Young highlights the potentially discriminatory nature of surveillance and argues that recognizing and evaluating surveillance in is increasingly important in a data-driven world. Open Access funded by Erasmus University Rotterdam Library in support of open science initiatives. It can be found in the SUNY Open Access Repository at a href="https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/8546"https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/8546a.

Winner of the 2007 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Award for Best Collection of Essays on Technical and Scientific Communication The first book to focus on the intersection of cultural studies and technical communication, Critical Power Tools draws on various traditions of cultural studies to develop new or expanded theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical approaches to technical communication. Offered as a sourcebook for the field, the book is organized into three parts. The first section, emphasizing theory building, reconceptualizes key concepts or practices, such as usability, through a cultural studies lens. The second section illustrates alternative research methods through several case studies. The third section offers critical and productive pedagogical approaches, including specific assignments, applicable to both undergraduate and graduate courses.

The field of technical communication is rapidly expanding in both the academic world and the private sector, yet a problematic divide remains between theory and practice. Here Stuart A. Selber and Johndan Johnson-Eilola, both respected scholars and teachers of technical communication, effectively bridge that gap. Solving Problems in Technical Communication collects the latest research and theory in the field and applies it to real-world problems faced by practitioners—problems involving ethics, intercultural communication, new media, and other areas that determine the boundaries of the discipline. The book is structured in four parts, offering an overview of the field, situating it historically and culturally, reviewing various theoretical approaches to technical communication, and examining how the field can be advanced by drawing on diverse perspectives. Timely, informed, and practical, Solving Problems in Technical Communication will be an essential tool for undergraduates and graduate students as they begin the transition from classroom to career.

Winner of the 2020 CCCC Research Impact Award Lean Technical Communication: Toward Sustainable Program Innovation offers a theoretically and empirically-grounded model for growing and stewarding professional and technical communication programs under diverse conditions. Through case studies of disruptive innovations, this book presents a forward-looking, sustainable vision of program administration that negotiates short-term resource deficits with long-term resilience. It illustrates how to meet many of the newest challenges facing technical communication programs, such as building and maintaining change with limited resources, economic shortfalls, technology deficits, and expanding/reimagining the role of our programs in the 21st century university. Its insights benefit those involved in the development of undergraduate and graduate programs, including majors, service courses, minors, specializations, and certificates.

How, in the name of greater security, our current electronic surveillance policies are creating major security risks. Digital communications are the lifeblood of modern society. We “meet up” online, tweet our reactions millions of times a day, connect through social networking rather than in person. Large portions of business and commerce have moved to the Web, and much of our critical infrastructure, including the electric power grid, is controlled online. This reliance on information systems leaves us highly exposed and vulnerable to cyberattack. Despite this, U.S. law enforcement and national security policy remain firmly focused on wiretapping and surveillance. But, as cybersecurity expert Susan Landau argues in Surveillance or Security?, the old surveillance paradigms do not easily fit the new technologies. By embedding eavesdropping mechanisms into communication technology itself, we are building tools that could be turned against us and opting for short-term security and creating dangerous long-term risks. How can we get communications security right? Landau offers a set of principles to govern wiretapping policy that will allow us to protect our national security as well as our freedom.

The spread of new surveillance technologies is an issue of major concern for democratic societies. More ubiquitous and sophisticated monitoring techniques raise profound questions for the very possibility of individual autonomy and democratic government. Innovations in surveillance systems require equally innovative approaches for analyzing their social and political implications, and the field of critical communication studies is uniquely equipped to provide fresh insights. This book brings together the work of a number of critical communication scholars who take innovative approaches to examining the surveillance dimensions of new media technologies. The essays included in this volume focus on interactive networks, computer generated imagery, biometrics, and intelligent transport systems as sites where communication and surveillance have become virtually inseparable social processes. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Communication Review.

This important new text invites readers to step back from their busy professional lives and look at technical communication philosophically, to ask fundamental questions such as what does it mean to communicate? and how do language and graphics - the ""signs"" or ""tools"" of the technical communicator - relate to action in a technological world? Through this excursion in the theory of technical discourse, you will discover a fresh approach to reports, manuals, and proposals produced and consumed daily in business, government, and research organizations around the world. The authors examine familiar genres in two relatively new ways.

This book enables readers to interrogate the technical, rhetorical, theoretical, and socio-ethical challenges and opportunities involved in the development and adoption of augmentation technologies and artificial intelligence. The core of our human experience and identity is forever affected by the rise of augmentation technologies that enhance human capability or productivity. These technologies can add cognitive, physical, sensory, and emotional enhancements to the body or environment. This book demonstrates the benefits, risks, and relevance of emerging augmentation technologies such as brain–computer interaction devices for cognitive enhancement; robots marketed to improve human social interaction; wearables that extend human senses, augment creative abilities, or overcome physical limitations; implantables that amplify intelligence or memory; and devices, AI generators, or algorithms for emotional augmentation. It allows scholars and professionals to understand the impact of these technologies, improve digital and AI literacy, and practice new methods for their design and adoption. This book will be vital reading for students, scholars, and professionals in fields including technical communication, UX design, computer science, human factors, information technology, sociology of technology, and ethics. Artifacts and supplemental resources for research and teaching can be found at https://fabricofdigitallife.com and www.routledge.com/9781032263755.