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Persuasive Physical Computing: A Review of David M. Rieder's Suasive Iterations: Rhetoric, Writing, & Physical Computing

Suasive Iterations seeks to expand the repertoire of physical computing, rhetoric, and digital humanities research in an age of pervasive technology and virtual reality. The book provides a collection of theoretical frameworks with which digital humanists can craft projects to evert the virtual and the real towards suasive ends. Rieder argues that digital rhetors and authors should seek to use the affordances of technology to bring the virtual and the real together to create reality altering experiences that are persuasive and transductive. This book is an invaluable tool for those new to the digital humanities as well as experienced scholars as it provides strong theoretical guidance as well as project ideas to promote research in the field. In a digital age of virtual reality, augmented reality, and pervasive computing technologies, the lines between the virtual and the real have been blurred, resulting in typified virtual reality experiences — that is, users know what to expect when using these media. For David M. Rieder, that marks a point in society where digital rhetors and authors should seek to “evert reality” and “creatively bend the conventional experience of reality toward some suasive end” [Rieder 2017, 5]. In Suasive Iterations: Rhetoric, Writing, and Physical Computing, Rieder argues that for digital rhetors and authors to persuade and move audiences they should not be seeking to fashion virtuality as reality; rather, they should be seeking to combine the two in novel ways, into what he calls an eversion of reality, a transductive process where the line between the “virtual and the real are folded together”, and the analog is blurred as a means of altering an audience’s reality [Rieder 2017, 11]. Thus, Rieder aims to deliver succinct methodologies for designing iterations of suasive physical computing projects. Suasive Iterations serves as a succinct reader and springboard for how digital humanists should begin research in the fields of physical computing and rhetoric and composition. Rieder’s text serves as a grand contribution to the digital humanities in that it moves and challenges the field towards considering the potential for physical computing research and empirical projects. Each chapter consists of a theoretical framework within which Rieder seeks to explore how rhetorical theory and physical computing can cooperate towards a means of persuasion in a post-PC era. Following each chapter is sub-chapter dedicated to a physical computing project which demonstrates the theoretical framework explored in the previous chapter. Organizing the book in this manner bolsters its argument, as each sub-chapter immediately puts theory into practice, providing a concrete application for the theories discussed. In addition to the efficient chapter design, a visual aid is present by way of images. Rieder includes images of devices such as circuit boards and wiring, which help to inform readers who may be unfamiliar with the technology. These images are invaluable when Rieder begins to discuss the features of a particular piece of machinery as they make the text and the concepts therein feel accessible and the technology less foreign. As such, Suasive Iterations serves as an excellent text for new media courses at the upper-undergraduate level as well as all levels of graduate courses — including MA and Ph.D. classes. Classes seeking to expose students to digital rhetoric, computers and composition, or physical computing and writing will find this text useful, particularly because of the research ideas and projects included in the sub-chapters which provide students with applications to the theory discussed, processes for designing research projects, and ideas for further research.