Academic Background

I have a Ph.D. in English from the University of Waterloo. My dissertation, "The Technical Effect: Free and Open Source Software and Everyday Life," was the highest ranked dissertation in the humanities, according to the 2006 Canadian Association for Graduate Studies Distinguished Dissertation Awards (category: fine arts, humanities, and social sciences).

My fields of expertise include: Software Studies, Free and Open Source Software, Rhetoric of Science and Technology, Alternative Media, and Postanarchism. My publications have appeared in Postmodern Culture, Technical Communication Quarterly, Rhetoric Review, Film-Philosophy, Technical Communication, Text Technology, and Cultural Critique.

I am currently a researcher in the RIM / Wilfrid Laurier Blackberry Pilot Program. For this program, I am using media equation theory to explore how the BlackBerry is perceived as an "instructor" in absentia in the context of mobile learning.

 

Publications

 

Refereed Article

“Imperfect Necessity and the Mechanical Continuation of Everyday Life: A Postanarchist Politics of Technology.” The Postanarchism Reader, Duane Rousselle, ed. Pluto Press, projected 2010.

“Generically Mobile: Road Movies, Virtual Reality, and the Paradoxical Freedom of Protocol.” Gordon Slethaug, ed. Temple University Press, projected 2010.

“Humor and 9/11 Conspiracy Theories," in A Decade of Dark Humor: How Popular Culture Has Shaped Post-9/11 Politics, Ted Gournelos, ed. University Press of Mississippi, projected 2011.

“Free as in Swatantra: Free Software and Nationhood in India.” TEXT Technology, Vol. 15, No. 2., Fall 2008, pp. 27-48.

“The Rhetorical Ecology of the Technical Effect.” Technical Communication Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3, Summer 2005, pp. 345-351.

 

“The Birth of Software Studies: Lev Manovich and Digital Materialism.” Film-Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 55, December 2003.

“The Architecture of Information: Open Source Software and Poststructuralist Tactical Anarchism.” Postmodern Culture, Vol. 13, No. 3, May 2003. 39 pp.

“Globalism, the World Cup, and the Canadian Example.” Media Culture Reviews. June 2, 2002.
.

“The Clothing of the American Mind: The Rhetorical Construction of Scientific Ethos in the Science Wars.” Rhetoric Review, Vol. 20, Nos. 3/4, October 2001, pp. 329-350.

 

Book Reviews

 

Review of Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum. MIT Press, 2008. Technical Communication 56.1, February 2009, pp. 65-66.

 

Review of Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture by Tarleton Gillespie. MIT Press, 2007. Technical Communication 55.1, February 2008.

 

Review of Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip by Clare Birchall. Berg Publishers, 2006. Politics and Culture 2.2 (2008): http://aspen.conncoll.edu/politicsandculture/page.cfm?key=633.

 

Review of The Empire of the Mind: Digital Piracy and the Anti-Capitalist Movement by Michael Strangelove. University of Toronto Press, 2005. Canadian Literature, No. 194, Autumn 2007, pp. 181-182.

 

Review of Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software by Matthew Fuller. Autonomedia, 2003. Cultural Critique 63 (Spring 2006), pp. 182-187.

 

Review of The New Media Reader edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. MIT Press, 2003. Technical Communication, Vol. 51, No. 2, May 2004, pp. 294-296.

 

Review of Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17^th Century to the Present by Alan G. Gross, Joseph E. Harmon, and Michael Reidy. Oxford UP, 2002. Technical Communication, Vol. 50, No. 3, Aug. 2003, pp. 395-397. Reprinted in The Exchange newsletter for the STC Scientific Communication SIG, Issue 11(1), February 2004.

 

Review of Judgment, Rhetoric, and the Problem of Incommensurability: Recalling Practical Wisdom by Nola J. Heidlebaugh. Rhetoric Review, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2002, pp. 301-304.

 

Bibliographies, notices, and other miscellaneous publications

 

Letter to the Editor. Technical Communication, Vol. 50, No. 4, 2003, p.438.

 

“Rhetoric of science in 2002.” Bibliography. With Randy Harris. Technical communication quarterly

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reprinted in Red Nova, July 5, 2005