"Food for thought"

During this past spring semester, I was enrolled in WRT 303 “Writing Culture.” Throughout this class we were required to create four “bundles,” a set of documents based on an assigned theme. Thinking back on the course and specific documents, each one could be considered “public writing.” The variety of possible documents was endless from press releases to fictitious event planning; each document could be categorized as “public writing.” While on the topic of public writing, the final bundle comes to mind. This assignment theme was public space. Public space was a difficult concept to wrap my head around and I found it the same for most of my classmates. What IS public space? What QUALIFIES as public space? How is public space DEFINED? When thinking about public writing, the same types of questions arise.

To start this post, I thought I would start by a simple Google search of “public writing,” under the image tab out of curiosity. To my surprise, I found an interesting image that sparked my interest. This image led me to an entertaining blog that can be found here.

Five key words that describe this public writing are bold, funny, creative, daring, and to some, rude. The writing, in addition to the thought process and actual act express the writers anger while illustrating creativity. It is left up to the readers’ interpretation of the act to decide the reader’s intention. Did they intend to be humorous or were they simply pissed off? Regardless, the writing was done in a public restaurant and available for the public to read. 

After surfing google for examples of public writing, I decided to switch it up and search YouTube for an interesting video on the “public sphere.” I came across a video of a young woman discussing Thomas Goodnights theory on the three spheres of argument. These include the personal, the technical, and the public. She explains that the personal sphere includes sites such as facebook, myspace, and youtube that include the general public, the technical sphere with sites that are used for specific careers. Finally, she discusses the public sphere explaining that blogs that cover a lot of information that the media does not include. Specifically, she stresses that the Internet is used for a variety of reasons but questions if there is an information overload due to disorganization. She suggests that there should be platforms that include all of these spheres to create knowledge from the extensive information provided.