Rhetorical Rationale
With my project, I am attempting to appeal to audiences which are most capable of disseminating my argument to even more audiences. My genres, a website, a reading list, and a discord server are all accessible by anyone searching for them, but are most likely to be found and appreciated by those amongst scholars of any sort of field, or cultural influencers like artists and producers of media.
From these artists, researchers, and academics, my arguments and ideas can be spread from points with major influence. As a single person, I would be unable to reach a lot of the audiences that my audience members would be able to reach. This functions almost like a pyramid scheme. If I were to actually pursue this outside of ENC 2135, all of my resources would be made open source and free to access and share by anyone so that this work could be more easily spread without having to center myself amongst it.
To contribute to making these ideas easy to spread, all of my chosen genres are capable of thriving through rhizomatic distribution. While the website and reading list can't be altered by community members, they are capable of being spread through communities and function as launching pads for further discourse. The Discord server, however, functions as the point where this further discourse can culminate and be recorded. This server is formatted in an organized way so that past discourse can easily be located by newer community members. I've observed this functionality to be useful in Discord servers that I've been a part of myself, so based on this experienced I incorporated it into this one. The server is also fairly limited in terms of the amount of channels, in order to keep focus and not to not stretch the community thinly across a great many channels that serve minute functions. This is another feature that I incorporated based off of my own experience. Commonly, when there are a lot of channels in a server, things can become lost and eventually the community will die.
Everything about the discord server's design is centered around fostering an effective, enduring community through which further discourse on the topic can be conducted in a variety of ways. There are text channels devoted to several purposes, as well as voice channels in which users can discuss the topics in a variety of contexts. The server also is public, allowing anyone who is given the link to access and use it. On the website genre, there is a hyperlink directing to the discord server. This interconnection between my genres allows for them to link to only more information about the topic, should the reader choose to engage with them. This also serves the purpose of making dissemination even easier, since only one link is needed to provide access to all three of my genres, each of which contain different information.
As apparent to any viewer, the website follows a format that isn't very conventional. This format is largely inspired by websites that were hosted on what is commonly called "web 1.0". This era of the internet wasn't so dominated by platforms such as Meta platforms, twitter, or other platform based networks. These networks were less centralized and more user focused than the later Web 2.0 that would be centered around capital. Structurally, Web 1.0 networks were a lot more user focused and esoteric in their nature. Aesthetically, this fits the subject of my project well. Thus, I chose to make my website in this way. This site is also hosted on neocities, a hosting network that is fairly limited but user oriented, and therefore good for making websites like this one. The design, a scrolling section on the left of the screen, is reminiscent of old blog platforms, and it also makes important information consistently reliable on the right side of the scrolling section without the site needing a header bar (these are usually ugly unless done right, and even then they don't work well on mobile). Speaking of mobile, the website isn't optimized for a phone display, but it works by making the right column into a header. I'm not really satisfied with this because I don't like headers, but I would rather the website look good on a computer than on a cell phone. My audience is more likely to use computers for sites like these than a mobile phone.
The large repeating image serving as a background of the website is a frame from the microchip section Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi. This movies focus is somewhat vague, but centered around mans relationship with nature. A major part of the movie consist of ideas of technology relating to nature (hence the frames depiction of a microchip). This image not only fit the theme, but is pleasing to the eye as a background to the website. The other image in the top left is a picture on the inside of MareNostrum, a data center housed in a chapel in Barcelona, Spain. This data center is housed here for various reasons, but is commonly referred to by proponents of data driven technologies (most recently I saw an image of this data center in an E/Acc presentation, but I have no association with this group and they are no bueno). These images fit well with the overall theme of the site, thus their inclusion.
My most straightforward genre was my reading list. The format for this was largely inspired by a reading list that I frequently follow that is published by Joshua Citarella of Do Not Research. There isn't really other reason for this than it being pleasing to the eye and fluid in the way it is read. There isn't very much room for creative liberties when making a reading list. The works selected and highlighted on the list are all organized in a way that is coherent and legible for someone inexperienced in either religious studies or data science. Gradually, complexity is built on. Also, the list is divided into four weeks. Each of the weeks takes a different focus within the field, building upon eachother all the while. This makes the list more easily integratable in group settings, whether in person or online. This, again, is beneficial for my drive to make all of my resources easy to spread and access. I am most proud of how I have integrated all three of my genres together so that they are part of a coherent program or sum.