The Two Virtuals: New Media and Composition

In THE TWO VIRTUALS, Alex Reid shows that to understand the relationship between our traditional, humanistic realm of thought, subjectivity, and writing and the emerging virtual space of networked media, we need to recognize the common material space they share. The book investigates this shared space through a study of two, related conceptions of the virtual. The first virtual is quite familiar; it is the virtual reality produced by modern computing and networks. The second, less familiar, virtual comes from philosophy. It lies in the periphery of more familiar postmodern concepts, such as deconstruction, the rhizome, and simulation. In drawing the connection between the two virtuals of philosophy and networked media, Reid draws upon research in computers and writing, rhetoric and composition, new media studies, postmodern and critical theory, psychology, economics, anthropology, and robotics. ABOUT THE AUTHOR ALEX REID is an associate professor and the director of Professional Writing at the State University of New York College at Cortland. His scholarship focuses on the relationship between writing, pedagogy, and emerging technologies and has appeared in journals such as Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Theory & Event, and Culture Machine, as well as in collections such as Culture Shock and the Practice of the Profession: Training the Next Wave in Rhetoric And Composition, and Techknowledgies: New Cultural Imaginaries in the Humanities, Arts, & TechnoSciences. He maintains a blog, Digital Digs, on the issues of new media, writing, and higher education at alexreid.typepad.com.