Dr. Andrew Wood Office: HGH 210; phone: (408) 924-5378 Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda

Rhetoric: The manipulation of signs such as text, words, images, and sounds. This manipulation can serve overlapping and contradictory purposes: it can be used to create a sense of identification between separate individuals, it can be used to resolve misunderstandings, it can be used to explain abstract concepts, and it can be used to confuse people. The role of rhetoric has been debated for centuries - some people argue that it is a necessary component to community building, that it helps people communicate and make sense out of philosophy and values. Others respond that rhetoric merely serves to trick people into believing falsehoods.

Public Life: A site created through rhetoric and manifested by architecture, laws, rules, customs, and other authorities where individuals may act in concert to resolve differences, solve problems, enact values, and define the edges of community.

Gernsback Continuum: a range of alternative worlds such as those envisioned by science fiction editor Hugo Gernsback - each with varying ways to organize public life. The Continuum can be accessed in several ways, ranging from dream states to artificial stimulants to moments that might be defined as madness. The Continuum intersects with the 'real world' through artifacts that invoke alternative notions of public life. Rhetorical manipulation of these artifacts can be used to critique public life. We discuss the Gernsback Continuum because it provides a metaphor for how one might view public life from an idealized position outside its borders.

Semiotic Phantoms (also called Semiotic Ghosts) - As conceived by William Gibson, semiotic phantoms are fragments of the Gernsback Continuum that invoke passage to alternative notions of public life. These phantoms manifest themselves in signs and artifacts (comic books, postcards, films, wallpaper second-hand clothing, abandoned buildings) that don't completely fit in contemporary life. Alone, they may be defined as trash or detritus. However, in various clusters or constellations, they can push the unprepared through the Gernsback Continuum and toward an outsider's view of public life.

Utopia - Pun between "good place" and "no place." Coined by Thomas More, utopia provides a fanciful vision of public life that critiques existing human relationships. While there are endless variations on the utopian theme in literature, films, and throughout popular culture, two major types are classified by Frank Manuel: utopias of permanence and utopias of change. Gibson's 1980s-that-wasn't vision of Tucson illustrates utopia and its counterpart - dystopia (bad place) - and defines a second theme of this course: rhetorical construction of the ideal public life almost inevitably rests upon a dystopian foundation of discipline and control.

Review Activities: View Things to Come (1936) with these questions in mind: (1) what kind of utopia is imagined by the film - utopia of permanence or utopia of change? (2) Compare H.G. Wells' Everytown AD 2066 to Gibson's 1980s-that-wasn't-Tucson. What are three similarities? Can you isolate any significant differences?