Critical Power Tools Part One

So I'm supposed to talk informally about a) my general thoughts b) stuff I liked and c) stuff I was troubled by. Here goes nothin'.

a) general thoughts. I know I'm not supposed to say this, but holy crap that intro nearly bored me to death. major takeaway: cultural studies defined here as "critiquing and intervening in the conditions, circulation, and effects of discursive-material practices that are situated in concrete but dynamic sociohistorical formations, that participate in ideological struggles over knowledge legitimation, and that help shape identities" (5) lets be real-- that pretty much sums up the entire section, because it mentions ethics and constructionism and the impact that this has on society and vice versa. I guess the mention of the debate (?) on whether adding cultural studies would take away from pragmatism was interesting, but any person who deals with theory will tell you that theory is meant to be practical-- the practical and the theoretical cannot be put into silos the way we want. So...not too surprising that they say they're all for being pragmatic as long as we take a critical eye to our shit. At this point, none of the information presented seemed too radical in comparison to the previous texts we've read. THANKFULLY, the actual essays included were, in my not-so-humble opinion, wayyyyy more interesting. 

b) cool stuff. the explanation of how the ideologies behind genres (email) lead to changes in behavior (emailoholism). Its fascinating to think of how writing changes not only the audience but the writer, and think about the relationship between these two roles as email allows me to more easily see the communication aspect of writing in general. perhaps I should start with this sort of approach in my syllabus? this also reminds me....the other day i was arguing with a student over whether texting has done good or bad things for society (I am on the good side). his main claim was that texting has made us worse at face-to-face communication. but what if we just value that form of communication less now as a result of texting's popularity? would his point be moot? anyway, I was thinking that the things they say about email is even MORE true about texting now. people check their phones every five minutes, for fear of missing a text! i also think its interesting to question the role of intent in writing. the essay says personal and business emails are merging in terms of form...but i wonder how we separate the two. we obviously do, considering we have separate terms, but where is this line drawn? i also loved the excerpted quote on change in the corporate world. something along the lines of "people would rather be miserable with something theyre familiar with than switch to something new and easy." ...in relation to genre evolution...how does this work? Is this actually true of the current generation? I feel like theyre all obsessed with new types of genres, like, snapchat and twitter caught on REALLY quickly. what is it about the corporate world that is so against this?
c) stuff I need help with. I started wondering, in reference to the chapter on email's change of life and itself, whether its a good thing. Then I stopped myself.-- is there even a point to arguing whether these things are good? they simply exist, and we should argue over the best way to deal with it. ...but perhaps change can occur when we critique the limitations of genre? (especially with technology creating more and more genres) or does this change result from the arguments over how to deal with current genres? idk. I'm rambling. i want to know how jacob feels about the slack chapter, considering I just found out he is a positivist. im over this blog post now.