iGod Analysis

                Nicholas Carr in his article iGod is attempting to inform his readers about the future, specifically the future of technology and where that will take us. While Carr’s purpose is to inform us of the future he uses many relatable and present examples to keep us interested. He often uses the google founders in his examples, these examples are something that we can all relate to and something that we know very well. We may not know the founders themselves, but we do know the google the search engine and many of us know how incredible and inventive google can be. Carr’s examples are relatable, but they are also very informative and to a curious mind this can be a very powerful tool to engage his audience. The article is filled to the brim with interesting and engaging facts, but the problem with this tool is that it is double edged. The facts are interesting to a point and then from there they seem to get very repetitive, which makes them boring and could cause people to space out. I am only saying this because this is exactly what I did while reading the article at certain points. It at times was just too much information to handle, but Carr often found a way to rope you back in. When things started to get boring eventually there would come something that got the audience to pay attention once again. Carr did this with pathos, there are some predictions in his article made by him and others that are very worrisome to most humans because they imply huge changes. Most humans are afraid of change to some degree and predictions of machines becoming smarter than man can be very worrisome to pretty much anyone. Another way that he ropes his audience in is by answering questions. At times I found myself questioning what this prediction or that statement could mean for someone like me and Carr always related it back to the common man. He did an excellent job of answering the questions that came up in his article.

Casey’s Paper Reflection

                The initial thing that stuck out for me was just how relatable this article is. I found myself continually quietly snickering and thinking in my head, “Yeah, me too.” I think anyone who has a smartphone can relate to Casey’s paper even if maybe it’s a person who does not often use their phone. Another aspect that I liked is that because it is so personable the paper very enjoyable to read.  While these are all good things I felt that it was so personable as to take away from the research part a little bit. The narrative is very good but I don’t feel as though I’ve learned much from it. The quote about people gaining emotional attachments to their phones was something that I did learn, but I feel as though the rest of the information is commonly known. Another thing is that I felt the paper had no conclusion. This may be that Casey is still performing her experiment, but I still feel as though there should be more to it. Overall the paper is good and other than adding more research, expanding on it a little bit more and adding more to the conclusion I would not change anything.

Kelly’s Paper Reflection

                What I really liked about Kelly’s paper is how balanced it is. There is a good amount of information without it be overwhelming. While sometimes the transitions are abrupt I still find that the paper doesn’t get boring because there is not too much time spent on one narrative or piece of research. I also liked Kelly’s conclusion, it built up with the paragraph before by talking about the terrible day that Kelly had had and then was defused and ended on a happy note. The last thing I liked is the research itself. It was often very interesting to me because I can associate with social media and it is interesting to learn more about its functions and how it has affected society. As I already mentioned the transitions could use some work. The paper jumps from research to narrative and leaves me wondering how one has to do with the other. This is a problem, but there are only a few places where I found this, it is mostly very well written. Another problem I had is that the intro seems to set up a different paper it starts out very broad and stays broad, but never transitions into lower, it just kind of jumps in.

Experiment Findings, Research, etc.

                In my experiment, I am trying to figure out the best way to get motivated to do things that I have to do, but don’t necessarily want to do. The first thing that I found is that attempting to break this habit of lacking motivation is incredibly difficult and I still have not managed to find a way to beat the habit in a way that I would like to. While I have made minor progress by doing a bit of research on motivational strategies they have not really helped much. These strategies include, yelling at yourself like a drill sergeant, imagining the task completed, and imagining a big task as individual pieces. These strategies haven’t been working so I decided to look a little more into what causes a person to be motivated. There is a whole theory in psychology called behaviorism that goes along the lines that all living organisms get motivated to do things through stimulus, basically it goes like this you start to feel hungry so you’re then motivated to stop whatever you’re doing at the moment to get up and go get some food. According to the behaviorist theory this will work all the way up to incredibly complex decisions that humans have to make every day. I decided to try an experiment based upon this theory I would give myself rewards to help motivate me, the motivation mostly being cookies. My recent experiment has me questioning this theory though because I do often know what is best for me, running for example is very good for me. If I know this is good for me then why don’t I just do this immediately because I know that this is what’s best for me why do I need that extra incentive? It turns out that this form of extra motivation does not really help all that much for me. The behaviorist theory can be spotty at times and there are a few other theories that say that as a species we are above simple stimuli to motivate every single one of our actions there must be a better way to get motivated.

                

Inequality… Analysis

                In Inequality: Can Social Media Resolve Social Devision? a chapter from Danah Boyd’s book Boyd speaks about, well the title really is self-explanatory. Boyd creates an argument that uses a ridiculous amount of logos taken from an even more ridiculous amount of research.  She does extensive field research filling this chapter with interviews from teens of all backgrounds from an inner city girl to a preppy rich girl.  These interviews are done and recorded over years and Boyd makes more and more conclusions to support her claim from them. Most of her interviews are focused around a pivotal point, when teens started to change from Myspace to Facebook. She points out what a few students said about their classmates; many of them said that the classmates that “higher ups” which more often than not turned out to be white people and one interviewee came out and said that the biggest reason that she and her friends switched to Facebook was to “and not to sound racist but” get away from the more ghetto people. Boyd eventually comes to a final conclusion that social media cannot fight segregation and that the race problem will be a problem for many years to come. Although her fieldwork is the main examples she uses to come to her conclusion it is apparent that she uses many secondary sources as well. Boyd often times talks about the huge racial segregation on the internet between teens. They will more often have friends of the same race commenting on their posts than of other races Boyd says after careful observation of teens’ social media pages. The more secondary research is really the meat of the argument. From this research Boyd comes to more serious conclusions and even implements it into her field work like when she pointed out to one of her interviewees some of her findings and built upon how surprised the interviewee was. She also makes many claims in the chapter and then puts a footnote on that claim to a piece of secondary research that she found that supported that claim. It seemed that every claim she made had some way to support it  and made the chapter very convincing to the reader. 

Consider the Lobster Analysis

                David Foster Wallace in his essay Consider the Lobster writes an intriguing essay (from a rhetorical standpoint) about a lobster festival that develops into something much more. The essay begins with just the lobster festival and a description of it, but Wallace expertly transitions the essay to become something of a moral battleground causing many of us what is called in psychology cognitive dissonance (the discomfort that you feel when two opposing opinions come into contact with each other in your mind). It is really impressive the way in which he does this. He uses this festival as an opportunity to write about the morality of cooking lobster while it is still alive. It is interesting how he uses the festival as a starting point to move into his opinions lobsters. He first starts with festival and then moves into the subject of lobsters, many facts and statistics are pulled out so that by the end of the essay you feel as though you could write this 350 page paper solely on the facts that he states, but this seems to be essential to the paper because the reader then feels that they know lobsters better than just that really expensive food that you get every once in a while.  The lobster then becomes more of a living thing to the reader. After what seems like a possibly infinite amount of lobster facts Wallace brings the focus back to the festival and starts talking about the organization PETA, who is apparently at the lobster festival most years to explain the pain that lobsters may or may not experience while being boiled. From here Wallace gets into the lobster meat of things¹ he turns the reader’s attention to what he really wanted to go to all along, the lobster cooking morality. He leaves the reader in a grey ambiguous area where you’re left not quite sure what you believe anymore because the whole world seems to have been turned upside down by lobsters. Wallace makes the reader think about their view on the subject and probably even managed to change a few opinions on the matter.

1: I know it was bad, but after seeing Wallace do it so many times I thought that I’d give footnotes a shot and for some reason it was the only thing I could think of that seemed worthy of one. I apologize for any pain that the pun may have caused.

Shipping Out Analysis

                Shipping Out by David Foster Wallace is a twenty four page essay about Wallace’s experience on a cruise ship. Wallace talks extensively about the human condition or at least the American condition and often likes to make fun of it. The author’s main purpose is to entertain his audience and to accurately describe his experience on the trip. Wallace’s attention to detail is incredible, he recounts every piece of the ship and describes the things that he did very well. He molds these details all into one common theme, everything on the ship is fake. The tourists, the workers, even the ship itself has a faux atmosphere around it that all ties into the theme. Wallace talks extensively about the details of the ship making some keen observations, or really just one observation, it is always spotless and perfect. There is no place with rust on it, the windows get washed every morning to wash the salt, and the one time that Wallace did come in contact with a defect it was fixed within minutes of him catching it. The author leads this all back to the fakeness of the ship he almost seems to imply that it is in some way a dystopian society that holds the appearance of a perfect world. The workers on this ship according to Wallace work to achieve the image, they as Wallace puts it, “pamper you to death” where they truly work as hard as they can to make sure their customers have a good time on the ship and feel the luxury. The author describes how his maid would somehow always know when he was going to be out for thirty minutes or more because when that happened he would come back to a spotless room. There was also his waiter who was so serious about the tourists experiencing a good time that it would pain him to hear anything other than that their experience was great. This plays once again into the dystopian society that Wallace has created on the ship through his reflections. The tourists are then the final piece to the dystopian puzzle, the stupid citizens that play into the hands of the higher ups and have lost all value. He constantly speaks of the materialistic tourists and how in the end he starts to become one too no matter how hard he fights it. Wallace really uses his experiences to paint a picture of a cruise ship in a light that many would not think of.

Being Healthy

                Because of a desire not to gain the freshman 15 and the fact that I’ve always wanted to get into the habit of exercising consistently I’ll be doing my experiment on being healthy through a good diet, exercising every day and going to bed and waking up at the same time. Studies show that good habits such as these can not only increase mood, but longevity as well. To do this I will attempt to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time as well, I will try to only eat healthy options at dining halls and in my dorm and I will try to exercise every day. I plan on going to bed each night at eleven and waking up at 7 then I will either go to the gym or go for a run. When eating I will only eat healthy things, which means mostly vegetables and meat with a little bit of grain. The experiment will be a challenge, I won’t be able to eat my favorite food, burritos, or stay out with my friends until two on the weekends. I really see the sleeping part and the consistent exercise part as my biggest humps to get over, it will be hard to stave off that late night Oreo craving, but getting up at seven and going to exercise will be rough and purposely excluding myself from going out with my friends past eleven will be even harder. To keep the experiment consistent I plan to reward myself for every time that I find it hard to get through it. When my friends are about to leave for a party instead I’ll go to my dorm and watch lost, my latest Netflix show, which I never have time to watch because I’m either doing homework or with my friends. When I don’t feel like exercising in the morning come back and take a long shower, which I really enjoy and find very relaxing. The problem with the food is that it will probably just have to be its own reward. I’m going to have to think of healthy snacks that I like and they will become my rewards. There is a possibility that this reward system will not work and then I will have to reevaluate my incentives and hopefully make them better.