Description
This assignment is a blended paper. It is both a research paper and a position paper in one. A position paper is just like it sounds. You are to take a position regarding a particular piece of literature. The idea is that most art has something to say. Your job is to figure out what YOU think the piece is attempting to say. You are looking for themes/ideas, symbolism, stereotyping, social commentary, or something else that runs through the piece of your choosing. There should be something interesting, compelling, fascinating, or thematic about the piece you have chosen to discuss. The primary source (the “thing” you are reading/interpreting) can be just about anything. It can be music, a movie, and album, an artist (either musical or paint/sculpture/etc), a Ted Talk, a YouTube video or YouTuber, an article, a video game, a movement…you get the idea (I hope). The next step after figuring out your thesis/topic/position is to find examples within your chosen piece that reinforce your thesis…find the threads that weave through your piece that ties your topic in. After that you will need to go online to EBSCOHost, JSTOR, or others to see what theorists and critics have said about your topic in conjunction with your piece (if they have at all). It may be easier to locate articles that support or reject your position/your thesis and then you can tie that reading/article to your particular primary source (the book, the movie, the tv show, the song(s), etc). These pieces of theory are to be used to SUPPORT your thesis. They are NOT to be used as the main argument nor are they to be the only critical voice in your paper. This is YOUR paper, not a regurgitation of what others have said. Therefore you should NOT have long quotes or summaries of the critics in the field. This is an opportunity to flex your new critical voices. The majority of your paper should be YOUR thoughts with proof from the primary source with critics added to help support your own thesis. This means that, just like if your previous assignment, you should be using the research you collected for your annotated bibliography to insert into your paper. The biggest difference in this paper is that you are using a primary from which to make your argument. The secondary sources that you gathered for this paper (which were presented in your annotated bib) are there to support your premise/argument/thesis. Your paper should be well-organized with the most persuasive and important secondary sources included in your argument. Please remember that your argument should be well balanced as well as organized. This means that you should at least acknowledge that there is an opposing viewpoint to your argument, even if this opposing argument is only acknowledged for its flaws or lack. Your main goal is to be able to persuade your audience (myself and your classmates) to recognize and understand the validity of your position while using a primary source as the main source of information to show/make your argument. Your argument should introduce and integrate your primary source throughout the paper. Remember to base your argument in your primary source. This source can be anything you chose that you believe best exemplifies the argument you attempt to make for this paper. For your secondary sources, you should be able to not only quote your secondary sources but to also paraphrase and summarize where necessary. In other words, make sure that you do not spend the paper regurgitating or quoting at length what others have said with only a cursory paragraph or two inserted with your own opinion or argument. Make sure that the others students and your instructor fully understand the complexity of your argument. This may mean that you will have to spend some time in your paper giving background information regarding the argument/conversation into which you are entering.Remember to use the rubric provided on Canvas to further ensure a grade on the paper that you want to earn. Also, remember to refer back to the text They Say, I Say if you need to add specific nuance to your quoting and using of sources.You are welcome and encouraged to run your topic by me and to also bring in a draft of your paper to me to ensure that you are doing the task correctly. If you get stuck and do not feel comfortable bringing your paper to me, may I suggest you utilize the Writing Center? Remember this service is part of your student fees, so there is no charge to visit them. Those there are always happy to help you at ANY and ALL stages of your writing process.One final note: Remember proper MLA format is expected and required for all papers. This includes proper heading, spacing, internal citing and work cited pages. All of this paper should be double-spaced. This includes the works cited page (which should no longer be in bold print for this assignment). Simple assignment breakdown: 1700 words MLA formatPrimary source/analysis is crucial to passing the paper The primary source must be the center of the paper’s attention All secondary sources should support or in some cases refute the way you chose to read your primary source
Irrah Daphnilee Comia
Dr. Cassandra Peay
ENG 102-1504
20 July 2020
Technology
Does technology drive improvements in society and culture? Technological determinists contemplate that technology causes all people to use it in different ways, and perhaps even to have different beliefs. Nobody believes that technology affects all people the same way. Clearly if technology affects us, it is because of our individual beliefs or of our culture as well. While we have to learn and accept these technological changes, we cannot avoid its use because most of the time, we are unaware that we are using technology, we have to adapt to changes, because it is everywhere. We all use the technology in many different ways, we use it to communicate with other people by using social media, we do research using the internet, and many other ways where the internet becomes a part of our daily lives but still depends on how we use it. It has not always been obvious that technology affects us in any essential way. It improves efficiency, saves time and provides better communication. What is called technology today is what used to be tools, and tools were assumed to be simply means for implementing human will. One of the consequences are people depend on technology extremely. I want to talk discuss how technology affects our daily lives.
Digital tools and networks are allowing us to share ideas with others, like how people post informative blogs. But what I will talk about on this paper is, is the I personally rely on the internet if I need to gain knowledge about something. I always use the term, “let me Google it”. I believe that it is easy and convenient and gives you the same kind of information that you will find in books. It saves me a lot of time. I am obviously embracing these changes because I benefit a lot from technology.
Some will definitely argue that the Internet is causing us to lose the ability to focus and read long texts. I believe that it all depends on what we are reading, specifically its type and content. I still believe that we are getting smarter with all these new technologies. Anyone who denies this fact, in my opinion, is probably too sentimental about the past. Being able to access all information online is convenient nowadays especially with our fast paced environment. We all learn a lot from the internet that’s why we use it as our primary source of information.
The internet is very powerful in a way that the age of information has made available more, cheaper, faster, and easier access to information of all kinds, opinions, and news creating a quantum leap in the advancement of science and technology and provides a world view, and therefore a world comparative standard for all societies supplying motivation to create a better world, a better society, and a better individual. The availability of pieces of information by simply using the internet to search for every little thing that we may think of. It influences people and society positively and negatively. Like what was mentioned earlier, technology positively impacts society as a whole by using technology in agriculture, it helped improve transportation, communication and education and the learning process. However, it has negative impacts too, like, resource depletion, and increased pollution.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” “They Say / I Say”: the Moves That Matter in Academic Writing with Readings, 3rd edition, edited by Gerald Graff et al, W.W. Norton & Company, 2015, pp. 313-28.
The article by Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, talks about how the internet is changing people’s lives. People uses the internet as the primary source of information, and he claims that it affects the ability to read books or research for the information that people need. What his point is, people don’t take time to read and think because they immediately turn to Google for answers. This is true of the Internet as well. People generally don’t stumble upon it in the wild. Rather, they grow up around people who are using it in particular ways that vary from culture to culture. People are all unaware that they are using technology in their daily lives. It is already immersed in the society that they do not even recognize that they are using it. That means that technology does not cause people to use it one way instead of another, much less to come away from it with particular beliefs or attitudes. There is nothing inevitable about how the Net has been domesticated within the environment, nor about the lessons they draw. For example, it is not only conceivable but common for children to be taught that the openness of the Net to unvetted ideas is a terrible failing. The lesson those children draw will likely be negative about uncontrolled information and positive about authority. There are also a few studies of internet behavior, giving them as evidence that there is something to the idea that internet use might be changing the way people think. But people are not, the internet does not change the way humans think. This article is relevant to my topic in a way that the author talked about how the internet is making us dependent.
Thompson, Clive. “Smarter Than you Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” “They Say / I Say”: the Moves That Matter in Academic Writing with Readings, by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, 4th ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2018, (Thompson 441).
The article by Clive Thompson, “Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” talks about how technology changes the way people think and sometimes how people act. Thompson gave a perfect example by using the game of chess where people tried to play using artificial intelligence. It is very clear that a person with a lot of experience can be defeated by a rookie with the help of a computer. The author’s standpoint on this issue is exceptional and that he believes these cognitive behavioral changes we have are largely positive. This article is relevant to my paper because it discusses how technology affects the performance of human beings.
Tufekci, Zeynep. “Does a Protest’s Size Matter?” “They Say / I Say”: the Moves That Matter in Academic Writing with Readings, by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, 4th ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2018, (Tufecki 525).
The article by Zeynap Tufekci, “Does a Protest’s Size Matter?”, states that in the digital age, the size of the protest is not an indicator of a movement’s strength. A protest does not determine its power on how many people are present but what you are representing is more important. What happens after the protest is very significant because many changes could happen. The author participated in the Women’s March in North Carolina, she admired the large crowd and the passion of those who marched. But she was thinking that if these people do not follow through, the large crowd won’t result in any kind of effectiveness. Large protest size does not really matter nowadays. Zeynep Tufekci uses her experiences with failed enormous protests to make her argument by showing that she is a credible source. She has experienced first hand the failed attempts of protesting by just coming together. Her protesting experiences are very interesting because the outcome she anticipated was the very opposite even though many people, cities, and even many other countries participated. to get them together is somewhat confusing. With social media making it easier to assemble people, it should be more effective because it reaches more people.
