Let's see, which of the texts do I want to write about. Throughout this class I've been pushed more and more towards trying to think about visual, the creation of visual, and the experience of the viewer, in different ways. In my research into video games, I came across something rather interesting...it was the idea of procedural rhetoric. Procedural rhetoric is an idea that Ian Bogost uses in relation to videogames. It is somewhat unusual, and also somewhat cool, and I think it has a distinct connection to what we've been doing in class.

Essentially the idea is that computers, computer programs, and pretty much everything else, have procedures to them. These procedures can range from the turning the page of a book to the complex procedures that go into interacting with a piece of technology. Cell phones, for example, have been going through a rather drastic change in procedural rhetoric over the last couple years...moving from a keypad system to a touchpad system that is supposed to be interconnective, but that also requires a larger knowledge of how to interface with the particular technology.

A procedure, just like an image, or a text, has meaning, has values attached to it, and just like with images and text, those values can be simple or complex. Bogost likes to examine the complex examples of political videogames through this lens. He points out how good political games force the player, through the procedures of the games, in order to see a particular point. A specific example he uses is of a videogame which lets you act as American forces dropping bombs to destroy terrorists. This game would show you through play that everytime you eliminate terrorist that you aren't going to be able to avoid hitting civilians. The mechanics, therefore, produce more terrorists, expontially, for every civilian you kill. The procedure demonstrates a losing battle against a terrorist threat, by forcing you to only have one option for interaction, an action that only produces problems rather than helps.

While Bogost's example is rather effective... he also doesn't move too far afield from videogames. Procedural rhetorics are visible in everything from our everyday jobs (what does the simple procedure of sitting behind a desk typing mean? What about being a teller at a bank? How do these two things produce different kinds of meanings through their procedures?) to the way in which art is produced (how do we go beyond analyzing a painting, to analyzing the persons entire way of painting? The gestures that they make, the times where artists simply throw paint at a canvas, what do all these mean?). What's more is, how can we take this to discuss rhetorics that we know in entirely new ways?

Also, considering how often we looked at technology in our class...what can we say about the procedures that computers themselves go through to perform any action that they do? These are more than simple machines, but rather are products of hundrds, if not thousands of procedures running in sequences. How does that change the way we see an image, a video, etc?

Something cool to think about.