Marconi's Wireless and the Rhetoric of a New Technology

By examining a selection of the discourse surrounding Marconi's invention of the wireless, which excited early 20th century audiences even before becoming a viable technology, this book establishes a broader definition for contemporary technical communication.

This book examines the discourse surrounding the wireless, created by the Anglo-Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. The wireless excited early twentieth-century audiences before it even became a viable black box technology. The wireless adhered to modernist valuesspeed, efficiency, militarization, and progress. Language surrounding the wireless is a form of technical communication, overlooked by today's practitioners. This book establishes a broader definition for technical communication by examining a selection of the discourse surrounding Marconi's wireless. The book's main themes are the following: 1) technical communication is all discourse surrounding technology, 2) the field of technical communication (or technical writing) should incorporate analyses of discourse surrounding technologies into its epistemology, 3) the wireless is a product of the society from which it comes (early twentieth-century Western civilization), and 4) the discourse surrounding the wireless is infused with tropes of progressspeed, efficiency, evolution, and ahistoricity.

Describes how a technology, specifically the wireless, adheres to cultural values Provides the first rhetorical analysis of Marconi's wireless explaining how this historical technology fits modernist values of the early 20th century Shows how to apply a rhetorical lens to new technologies Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt
Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- Chapter 1. The Rhetoric of Technical Communication.- Chapter 2. Analyzing Technology to Uncover Social Values, Attitudes, and Practices.- Chapter 3. Marconi's Representations of the Wireless.- Chapter 4. Popular Press Representations of Marconi's Wireless.- Chapter 5. Tropes of Progress in F.T. Marinetti's Early Futurist Texts.- Conclusion.- Notes.- References.