The death of rhetoric

Web 2.0 - whether it's a phenomenon or evolution - has profoundly influenced the way human beings communicate. It's more than just the spontaneity and immediacy with which we now can interact with the world, Web 2.0 has radically refigured the traditional discourse about form and content in language.

The hitherto apparent distinction between form and content in Western civilization has now become blurred.

At one time, we could easily interpret a Cinquecento Tuscan artist's challenge of his Venetian rival about the priority of disegno over colorito as being an extension of the dichotomy between form and content in rhetorical analysis.

This is no longer so simple. Where the form of rhetoric is now inexorably linked to its content, so too is the content of meaning inseparable from its form. Indeed, the fundamental discursive paradigm on which Western civilization rests (ie. rhetoric) has been refashioned. Without rhetoric, we no longer need to acknowledge a "division between what is communicated through language and how this is communicated."

Without acknowledgment for this division, what are the implications for society, or the way in which we interact on an individual - well, nigh, global - level?

References:
Burton, Gideon O. March 2001. "Silva Rhetoricae," Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
http://rhetoric.byu.edu/encompassing%20terms/Content%20and%20Form.htm

Farber, Allen. "Titian's Venus of Urbino," SUNY, Oneonta, NY. employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth213/Titian_Venus_urbino.html

Wesch, Michael. January 2007. "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing," Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE