Richard Lanham

I especially like Lanham's idea that the term rhetoric should be retired, and perhaps communication could take its place. He had this to say in a 1996 interview:

Rhetoric, for most of its 2,500-year history, was the name for how the Western world taught its children to speak and write, and to think about speaking and writing. We might think of it as teaching “the art of expression,” or more grandly “the means of conscious life.” Nowadays, we call it “communication,” and its importance is, I think, universally acknowledged. The historical study of rhetoric has been the discipline that tries to chart this ground and lead us through it. We could, and maybe we should, just drop the word rhetoric as too soiled and use communication or some other word. What I’ve been trying to do, in The Electronic Word and elsewhere, is to project the computer’s expressive world onto the screen of that history. Digital expression is the latest chapter in a long history, and it makes much more sense when viewed in terms of that history. (Davis, Rod. Computer Greek: an Interview with Richard Lanham. American Way, 29.22)

I'm very interested in thinking more about how digital technologies are part of the long history and tradition of rhetoric. Perhaps a day will come when we no longer refer to "visual rhetoric" because there will be a visual component to everyday rhetoric - only likely to happen in digital environments.

I also have been considering learning styles and how they apply to rhetoric. In the days of Plato, argument was in the form of spoken words. I assume that auditory learners would have done well with this type of rhetoric. Later, when printed material was readily available, good readers gained the upper hand in rhetoric. With digital technologies, there are opportunities for visual learners, auditory learners, and good readers. It might change our definition of "smart".