ABSTRACT
Network theories of various kinds have been in development for a long time in the fields of rhetoric and professional communication. The question of Cui bono? gets at the heart of the intersections of rhetoric and ethics and the role of the phatic function. This chapter analyzes how networks shape communication, people need to apply not only a critical lens but also a cyborgian lens—and they need to expand their notion of ethos. Digital technologies have brought about many changes for professional communication practice. Technological changes such as artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) and the human uses of and interactions with technologies also raise questions about how organizational structures and the cultures that both produce those structures and are created by those structures need to change as well. Key to proactive agency, though, is alertness, alertness to the ways in which laws, regulations, and policies do exercise an effect on the network and its communication interactions.
