The primary thesis of everything is a remix is, as the title says, everything is a remix. The video series goes through brief musical, movie, and invention history to show how one idea led to another which led to another and so on. Remixing is copying, transforming, and combining to create a new piece, item, or idea. One example given in the first video is Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin copied a lot of parts for their songs, such as the very recognizable guitar intro to Stairway to Heaven, which came from Taurus by the band Spirit. Ironically, Led Zeppelin later had many parts of their songs used by future artists, such as Eminem sampling When the Levee Breaks for his song Kim. 

Fergueson’s concept of remixing connects to rhetoric because these remixes can change the world. One notable example is the assembly line, first used to great effect by Henry Ford in the early 1900s. Ford remixed ideas that already existed such as interchangeable parts and the assembly line, to create the first line of mass produced cars in the Model T. In the present day, most companies use an assembly line style production system. Another very important invention was the internet, created in the early 90’s. The internet is one of, if not the, greatest and most impactful inventions in human history. The way the internet affected the way people around the globe live may never be achieved again. Looking at the use of the internet only in the time span of the last month, we use it for work, for classes, for leisure and entertainment, shopping, banking, and communication. Without the internet, we would lose almost all contact with everyone. The invention of the internet is the best example of how remixing connects to impacting the outside world.

If we look at the third article we read for this class, Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric. In this piece, the authors talk about how extremely influential rhetoric is and how someone may respond to it based on their rhetorical ecologies. A rhetorical ecology goes back to the article we read before that, From Rhetorical Situations to Rhetorical Ecologies. This piece explains how multiple rhetorical situations transform and combine, which is Fergueson’s definition of a remix, to form a rhetorical ecology. If we go back one more piece, we’re looking at the Rhetorical Situation, which defines a rhetorical situation as an event that consists of an exigence, an audience, and a set of constraints. The ideas presented in A Rhetorical Situation are remixed in From Rhetorical Situations to Rhetorical Ecologies, which are remixed and used in Green Culture, and many of the texts we have read past that point.

I will most likely approach this project the same as my others where I just kind of jump in and see what works and what does not, and what I like and do not like. As for the things that I want to highlight, I am thinking of maybe highlighting my interest in music and piano, since I have been playing piano for years now. I was also thinking about showing how much I enjoy playing video games, or the joy I get from hanging out with my friends. I was also thinking of maybe even including my insomnia because my friends and family know me for being up at night and falling asleep during the day. To do this project effectively, I will have to go through my camera roll on my phone and try to find pictures of me doing some of these things, but since I do not like to take pictures of myself, I may have to see if my friends have any pictures or try to find some pictures of these things online. The only one of my ideas that I know I have pictures of is me sleeping because my friends and family always take pictures of it. Once I figure out which pictures I want to use for this project, I will have to save them onto my laptop. As for the software I am going to use, I searched and downloaded about two or three picture editing apps onto my laptop. However, depending on how good or bad they are, I may just have to download Photoshop onto my laptop and use that instead. If I do use Photoshop though, I might have to YouTube how to use it since I have never really used it before. 

I didn’t really have a reaction to project 3, it was more just kind of an “oh okay, cool, that’s what we’re doing next” moment. I think this assignment is actually pretty cool and interesting. As far as English and rhetoric classes go, I have never had a project like this. Most of the projects in those classes were either papers, speeches, or power points, so to be assigned this is unorthodox to what I would have originally expected from a class like this. However, I think it is cool that it takes from Shipka and other rhetoricians saying that the medium we choose or are required to write in should be changing with the technology we have, instead of research paper after research paper. Twenty years ago, this project would be damn near impossible or at least difficult if you could not draw, but now with the technology and software we have, it seems relatively simple to do.

Composition made whole refers to the view that any and all composition is composition regardless of medium. For example, she talks about a student who wrote an entire research paper on a pair of ballet shoes instead of a traditional paper, and a teacher makes a joke about it, instead of recognizing that that was a rhetorical choice the author made. She also talks about texting, emails, playing games online, and more, because people do not see these as writing since they associate writing to traditional papers, which Shipka is trying to get away from. Even though these aren’t typically seen as composition, she argues that they still are composition because they are still writings, just in a different medium than people are used to. This project draws from Shipka because rather than having us write a paper on what our identity is or something along those lines, we have to create a drawing or edit a picture in order to convey the same concepts.

From project 2, I learned to recognize some of the less obvious writing standards in accounting that I never knew or realized. I also learned what a white paper looks like, how to write one, and how to cite financial statements in APA format. I learned to recognize these writing standards by reading financial statements myself and trying to work out what was similar and what was different based on the type of company it was. I learned how to write a white paper from examples given by Professor Wilgar and examples I found myself. As for citing financial documents, I tried to use a citation website, but eventually just googled how to do it manually. This knowledge is significant because I now know how to recognize a white paper, as well as write one if need be in the future. It is also significant because it gave me more knowledge in writing in the accounting field, which is one of my majors.

To prepare for project 3, I have to look at some of the resources given to to us by Professor Wilgar, try to find some good pictures of me to use, and download some sort of picture editing software.

The author of this book is Robert R. Johnson, who is a professor of rhetoric, composition, and technical communication in the Humanities Department at Michigan Technological University. The primary audience for this text is rhetoricians with a focus on science and technologies, but perhaps also people in the field of law. Johnson implies that rhetoric is about mindset, and how that mindset affects our actions. He says that “atomic mindset is created through…. [the] power that atomic usage has held over humans….to become an obsession of human consciousness and, ultimately, action.” Johnson seems to imply that genre is two different ways of thinking, calculative and meditative. Calculative thinking, which is what he says is the mindset that led to the atomic bomb, is a thought process that leads from one thing to the next with the objective to reach a specific goal. However, meditative thinking is a thought process that allows us to not go down a single goal path with one single ideology. The main point of the Radium Girls story is that mindsets were shown by these two sides. The amount of people during this time period that believed in the possibility that these girls were poisoned by radioactive chemicals from working with undark were few and far between, at least until the end of the trials. These few people, such as Dr. Cecil Drinker or Raymond Berry, exhibit the meditative mindset, as they were open to the possibility that this could be harmful, despite the company insisting it wasn’t. On the flip side, people running and affiliated with the U.S. Radium Co. exhibit the calculative mindset. Even though they knew the substance was harmful, they denied it, insisted the workers lick their brushes to keep them sharp, and even sold radioactive dust to be used in childrens’ sandboxes, in an attempt to make profits. This book shows why rhetoric is important in a field such as science. The desire for atomic weapons was an obsession that became reality, which led to immoral actions on the part of this company. Similar cases to this one have come up in the past, and can come up again in the future as more technologies continue to be invented.

A white paper is an authoritative document intended to fully inform the reader on a particular topic and help them understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. White papers are typically written by groups and organizations, such as governments and businesses, and meant to be read by people in or considering joining said group or organization. A white paper’s rhetorical purpose is to attract readers to the group or organization by offering top-quality knowledge about them. Typically, white papers first explain the purpose of the white paper and have an introduction. Then, they have a background of the group or organization and it’s history. This is followed by a description of the problem or need for the white paper. After this is the solution or findings about this need or problem, and the benefits or the solution or findings. Typically, white papers are about 6-8 pages long. 

For my discipline, I am writing about auditing and accounting. Reports and documents written by this profession are supposed to be accurate and truthful, as they are submitted to the government through the Securities and Exchange Commission, and then to potential investors and creditors so that they can decide whether or not to invest in a company. As for how students learn to do this, many classes have students read over financial documents and then write their own report on the company. Professionals have to write about much more than students though. They have to write reports about the company’s financial health, internal health, future health, as well as reports about production, and more. These documents are used by internal users and external users. These documents must be objective, detailed, descriptive, and meticulous. Accountants base these documents off of financial statements and documents, depending on what they are reporting. A financial report that is sloppy, confusing, or misleading will most likely cost a professional their jobs, potential jail time, and have residual impacts on a company. In extreme cases, the government may have to step in if companies are reporting to misleading or sloppily, and institute new regulations. This was most notably seen in 2002 with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which tightened the regulations placed on financial reporting.

Jason Palmeri is an Associate Professor of English at Miami University, and previously worked in a law firm focused on medical malpractice. The primary audience for this text seems to be scholars and other rhetoricians in his field, as well as medical and legal teams, especially ones that collaborate. Palmeri talks about how each group within the law firm has a different genre, or standard response or expectation, as to what their documents should look like. The nurses fill their documents with a lot of medial detail, but also short, choppy sentences. On the flip side, the attorneys make their documents very grammatically proficient, but like to focus on a few tangible events or medical situations. This is seen when the nurse consultant believed that the UTI being the cause of death should be the main focus, clashed with the attorney saying that the gangrene should be the focus because it was easier for someone not in the medical field to tie to the death. The main argument of this text is that discourse may clash with each other in three ways when they have to collaborate with each other. Discursive conflict is when there is a disagreement about which discourse convention should be used, epistemological conflict is when there is a disagreement between what constitutes as evidence, and bypassing is when two discourse communities have a different definition for the same word. This text says that rhetoric in these fields are very important, but very different. These clashes are not necessarily positive or negative, but just the result of the clashing discourses. While in a medical setting, the rhetoric a nurse or doctor would use is very short, detailed, and objective. However, in a legal setting, the rhetoric an attorney would use is very persuasive and based more so on how it is framed rather than how much detail there is. Palmeri says that rather than trying to eliminate or maximize conflicts, organizations must find strategies to productively use conflicts between discourse groups to further the organization’s goals.

I think that research is very important and a lot of people, including me, don’t realize how often we do it now that we have phones and the internet at our disposal. People need research to learn and explore new ideas, which is the same reason why we do it. When people don’t know how to do something research can give the answer or help you arrive at one. For example, when I learn to play a song on piano, I look up the song. However, a lot of times some of the notes or chords are wrong, and I may have to find a second or third page and try and match up what is right and what fits where, so I can learn the song. 

I think researchers use different methods of research because not every question can be answered in the same way, not to mention there is almost always some sort of error or outlier. Take a high school project for example, I asked about 30 people if they knew how to do stuff like write a check, apply for a job, or change a tire, and then used those statistics to try and answer whether schools should teach those skills. However, this would not have worked in something like our first project for this class, because if I ask people if Eli Manning should be in the Hall of Fame, the results will most likely be skewed based whether they pay attention to football or if they are Giants fans. For that project, I asked a few people that I know pay attention to football their views, and listened to or read articles from sports analysts or players. I wouldn’t say the concept or even how to research confuses me for the most part. I think one part that definitely confuses me about research is why wikipedia can’t be used as a viable source. 

From this assignment, I learned how much some ideas flow into another or are connected in some other way. While doing this project, I realized that factors that I thought stood alone truly did not, and were actually important factual points or building points for more of my argument.I learned this while trying to plot out my mind map. During this process, I kept finding points that were the aftermath of something, related to another point, or two points led to. This knowledge is important to the course because it was a way for me to observe how a rhetorical ecology flows and evolves over time. It also showed me that just because I am a part of a certain discourse community, someone else can be a part of it in a different way or reason. For example, I never thought about how clutch Eli Manning was or how many times he led his team to a victory while down in the fourth quarter, especially in the postseason, until my grandfather mentioned it. I also learned that one rhetorical situation can create more than one discourse group. While I believe that Eli Manning should get into the Hall of Fame, many others, including other Hall of Famers, believe he should not be in the Hall of Fame. Even though they are on opposing sides, they both are related to the rhetorical ecology of whether or not Eli Manning should be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

In order to get ready for the next project, which I am most likely going to focus or writing in accounting, I will most likely look at some financial documents prepared by accountants, such as a 10-k, and try to observe and monitor the language that they use. As an accounting major, I have already seen a couple documents and know some of the things to look for and what they entail. For example, I know that financial documents should be unbiased, and the 10-k will mention something along the lines of the report being accurate and unbiased in the auditor’s report. 

The author of the first article is Elizebeth Wardle, Howe Professor of English and Director of the Roger and Joyce Howe Center for Writing Excellence at Miami University. Her primary audience for this piece is students. She implied that genre is the way we write for a specific audience. She implies this because of the way she talks about how people write. She claims that when people write, they always have an audience in mind, whether it is a boss, a family member, yourself, or so on. She claims that in every scenario, the way you write is affected by your audience, and, therefore, you can’t learn to “write in general,” because these writing skills are rarely completely transferable from one task to another. This text is trying to inform students about how difficult writing truly is, and that the myth that learning to write in general is a dangerous concept and needs to stop. 

The author of the second article is Carolyn Miller, an Associate Professor of English at North Carolina State University. The primary audience for this text is other rhetorics and scholars in her field. This article says that genre is a social action, and a rhetorical means for mediating private intentions and social exigence. She also says that genres can change, evolve, and decay, and that the amount of genres in any society is indeterminate and depends on the complexity and diversity of a society. Miller’s claim is that the definition of genre should not be centered on the substance or the form of discourse, but on the action it is used to accomplish. She explains this examining the connection between genre and rhetorical situation, as well as show how hierarchical models of communication relate and highlight genre. Her purpose is to inform her audience on the definition of genre and the use of genre in rhetorical situations, discourses, and society as a whole.