At some level, of course, it is all just code running on machines, but it is important to recognize that some genres become strongly associated with the presence of par- ticular moral values (or their absence) or specific postures about practical worth to society (or cost). What makes the general public think that making a first-person- shooter is intrinsically more morally suspect than word processing a document? What makes the population think that video file sharing is intrinsically worse than exchanging electronic mail? The answers have to do with ideas about language and knowledge that shape the nation’s legislative agenda as well. Rhetoric, as Aristotle points out, entails precisely those discursive practices that assign positive and negative characteristics. Studying digital rhetoric involves examining ideologies about concepts like “freedom” or “honesty” that are in turn shaped by factors like national, linguistic, theological, or disciplinary identity; societal attitudes about ownership and author- ship; and cultural categories of gender, race, sexuality, and class. As Richard Lanham has argued, “in practice the computer often turns out to be a rhetorical device as well as a logical one.”