Notice: After 12 years of a coaching practice (executive, life, creative), I will be taking a hiatus / 'sabbatical' as of November 15 (2026).  Time to rest, re-charge, and re-tool on that front.

All best, 

-Ben

'What is the internal "circulation" that maintains the particular body (individual, collective)?  And what is the external?
 
How can internal systems generate what is needed while also engaging and benefitting from external systems?
 
There’s self-reliance and there’s rapprochement with what’s other than one’s self, including one's circles.
 
But ‘self’ can be a construction and a focus on it can be a myopic stare in the mirror.  While ‘self’ may be found and/or created in others.  “You” are already “there”.'

-Memento Vivere Notes, No. 10, adapted.  [20201030]

'There are various forms / terms to identify units of efficacious information:  ideograph, sign, meme, representation.'

-Fragments of Memetica, No. ​​45.  [20210321]

'It is said that thinking (and reading) and writing (and talking) about living is no substitute for living, except that thinking (and reading) and writing (and talking) are already life. 

These marks on this page (or this screen) are not “not natural” as a bird pecking at their nest is not not natural. 

Both these pecks on the page (or screen) and on the bird’s nest are natural, where “natural” is a totalizing term for all that is, positively speaking, and which comes to us humans and individuals as most obvious in the most powerful / “other” that humans deal with, which are the physical elements, external and internal.'

-Memento Vivere Notes, No. ​9., adapted  [20201018]

'The term “information” may be seen as ideographic with a main division between:
 
a) “information” as used within specialized disciplines, &
 
b) “information” used as a word in our daily lives – ordinary talk.
 
Analysis of information-as-ideograph starts with the ordinary, then gets used in the specialized, and then returns to ordinary talk in a new way.
 
In specialized terms we can ask about:
 
“information” in physics
“information” in chemistry
“information” in biology
“information” in psychology
“information” in sociology / anthropology
“information” in history (cf. documentary)
“information” in economics
“information” in humanities/arts (: semiotics)  [see also Bennett-Carpenter, 2023, 2026]
 
Add to this the wide variability of the use of “information” across and within the “disciplines” including across theories & empirical work, scholarly work, and professions.'

-Fragments of Memetica, No. ​44.  [20210321]

'Toggling Information Rhetorics:  Facilitating Rhetorical Trust through Common Jargon and Specialized Terminology in Science, Technology, and Medicine Communication'  (forthcoming November 2026)

Pre-Conference meeting of the Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the annual convention of the National Communication Association.  New Orleans, Louisiana.  [Forthcoming]

'Abstract (500 words or fewer):
This presentation addresses the topic of how rhetoricians may “intervene to foster more trustworthy communication ecologies” (CFP) through concepts and rhetorics of “information”.  I suggest information rhetorics may be and are used in both useful, common vernaculars and also useful, differentiated specialized terms.

One primary way to connect to colleagues in other disciplines, fields, and domains particularly in the sciences and medicine is by whole-heartedly attending to, observing, and acknowledging information concepts and rhetorics:  that is, that that they exist, and what they are.  One may clarify main ways that information concepts and rhetorics are used as Luciano Floridi describes as about, for, and as reality, reflecting main streams of “information”, respectively, as either semantic, instructional, or physical.  This then allows one to distinguish discussions of misinformation and disinformation in science, health, and medical (STM) communication as all contained within the mainstream of semantic information – that is, information about reality – but not primarily contained within the ideas of instructional and physical information.

That is, one may identify and contextualize a much larger and all-pervasive context of information concepts/rhetorics that may contain the untrustworthy activities of mis- and dis-information – thus, ultimately potentially bringing about increased means for facilitating trust.  Once one sees and shares the big context of information rhetorics more generally, it may put mis- and dis-information into a more manageable context.

Another way to build trust through information rhetorics in STM communication is by wholeheartedly embracing a toggle between holistic/vernacular communication, on the one hand, and differentiated/specialized communication, on the other hand.  It is possible and necessary to be able to speak a common language of “information” while also allowing deference to specialties; that is, specialized uses of particular terms within disciplines, fields, and domains.  Very generally, these terms could move from “information” over to, for instance, “bits”, “genes”, “signs”, and/or “tokens”, among many other possibilities.  More precisely, the move from a general, common language of information would shift to the unique sets of terms that cannot easily be translated or simply cannot be translated into a generalizable discourse.

Trust comes here on this side of things not through commonality but precisely in difference.  Amazingly then trust has an opportunity to be built both through the common and the uncommon, through shared language and practice and also through singular, unshared, isolated, diverse language and practice as well – for example, a particular as-yet anomalous case or a particular study that initially deviates from an established norm yet is substantiated and offers heuristic value.

Thus, through toggling between common jargon and specialized terminology, rhetorical trust may be facilitated.

Keywords:  rhetoric, information, communication, common, specialized, trust'.