Remember when I said the internet couldn't be shut down? Funny story...

OK, when I have said - over the course of the semester - that the internet couldn't be shut down in this country because of our [do you remember the type of?] network, I wasn't telling you the exact truth. The fact is that a very complicated series of sophisticated attacks called a "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attack can shut down big chunks of the internet in the U.S. or any other country.


In a DDos, traffic increases so quickly over so many nodes simultaneously that servers can't do what they're supposed to do, which is basically figure out where all the packets are supposed to go. The theory has sort of always been that no DDoS, or even multiple DDos (es?) could shut down - say - the internet.

So, flashback a bit to Friday 10/21. A coordinated series of DDoS attacks overwhelmed the services of a huge internet "hub" kind of company called Dyn; here's their statement about it. You may be thinking, "I hate acronyms. What do I care?" Well, Dyn is so big and tied in to so many other networks that the attack disrupted at least some part of service (according to Gizmodo) at a TON of sites including:

• CNN
• Github
• HBO Now
• Iheart.com (iHeartRadio)
• PayPal
• People.com
• Pinterest
• Playstation Network
• Reddit
• Spotify
• The Verge
• Twitter
• Wired.com
• Wix Customer Sites
• Yelp
• Netflix
• New York Times
• Weather.com
• WSJ.com

See anyone you know?

The FBI and other law-enforcement agencies have said they're investigating the attacks. What do you see as the possible ramifications, the possibility for future threats, that this kind of attack might suggest?

Code follows function: adding in a new HTML element 'cause they have to.

Our class is a way off from any real analysis of web page creation, but I just ran across this interesting article about a new HTML element that may be created, in part because of the ubiquity of mobile browsing and what Ethan Marcotte called "responsive design."

Imagine that someone somewhere, the MLA perhaps, just created a brand new part of speech because that's where use of the language was headed. Not a new word or phrase, mind you, but a new way to use those building blocks in our language. this change isn't quite as extreme, but it's still pretty interesting. Give it a read over on Ars Technica.

How we react to untrue images

I just ran across this video-article that shows four women's reactions to seeing their own images manipulated in Photoshop.

Given that :

• image-manipulation is now nearly completely democratized (in that, perhaps you can get LOTS of industry-competitive software for little-to-no money)
• that we (users in general) depend a LOT on images as our dominant information delivery system,
• and that we know our own faces well(i.e. the "information" delivered by that image is very familiar to us)

I thought it was pretty interesting to see how "users" reacted to obviously false information. How do we react to information that is less obviously false? What can we do as critical readers and designers to more effectively discern that information manipulation?

ENG 3393 homework, due 2/14

• Find an online example of persuasion (per Ch. 8).
• Identify the elements of persuasion that are used effectively (remember, "effective" doesn't necessarily mean "I like it.")
• Identify any ineffective elements (maybe there aren't any, but I bet there are)
• Post a link AND your short list in a comment below. Include your name in the comment.

The rhteorical triangle and viral content

I read an interesting article from The New Yorker's blog "Elements" the other day about how and why viral content becomes, well, viral. What makes this video of a cat falling in a toilet more popular than that meme where Xzibit seems to be saying something funny? Why is a news story on protests in Greece less popular than another news story about protests in Vietnam?

Author Maria Konnikova might say it better when she asks, "What was it about a piece of content—an article, a picture, a video—that took it from simply interesting to interesting and shareable? What pushes someone not only to read a story but to pass it on?"

Essentially, she points to the traditional notions of the rhetorical triangle (logos, pathos, and... what's that other one?) and our tendency as language users (visual, textual, etc.) to lean towards one point of the triangle or another.

Aristotle used the rhetorical triangle as a means for creating information delivery devices that were not only persuasive, but also memorable (and thus able to be passed along by listeners, in his case). Konnikova refers to the "presence of a memory-inducing trigger" for viral content, and for example refers to her article about the popularity narratives containing lists. It's just one link to the traditional rhetorical triangle, but it's a meaningful one.

Based on the article, what do you think of some of the other connections she describes?