"Material, Literacy and Visual Design" by Lester Faigley

    Faigley's article confused me quite a bit initially, with the introduction showing examples of young teen's websites. He then went on to show an actual company, Time Warner's, website, right afterwards. I thought here Faigley was going to compare and contrast the two, but instead said very little about their differences and similarities.

    He then quickly moved on to describing how pictures and illustrations have been viewed as "for the illiterate" and how many, including William Wordsworth, condemn the use of such, and believed it would lead to the dumbing down of society. Faigley argues that the combination of writing and pictures, commonly referred to as multimedia, is being and in the future can be used to surpass rhetoric potentials set with writing being their only discourse.

    Faigley seems to be very optimistic and determined that with the growing use and unending possibilities of the web, people will realize that they have the ability to create rhetorical discourse with the use of multimedia that can surpass the limitations that writing alone entails.

    I personally did not prefer the set up of this article; the layout and order of ideas both seemed a little scattered. Especially the first website Faigley displayed, called “Phaedreus Media”, which held what looked like links, but really weren’t, gave the actual article a sloppy appearance, and didn’t draw the reader in.

    But even so, Faigley’s ideas are very enlightened, and commonly held among many writers, publishers, and composers of the present time.