Readings on Media and Technology

Adam Alter, “Irresistible: The Business of Technology is the Business of Addiction”

Reading Questions:

1. Alter writes about ways software engineers develop some apps and games in a way that deliberately hooks users. What are some of the ways technology is engineered to be addictive? Why are these techniques problematic to our relationships?
2. Alter discusses the idea of substance abuse versus behavioral addiction. According to Alter, what is the difference between these ideas? How has behavioral addiction become an everyday issue in our society? What are steps we can consider taking to decrease this addiction?

Writing Questions:

1. Compose a Summary and Response Essay in which you summarize Alter’s article, including claims, main ideas, and important examples. Then, respond to his ideas about technology and behavioral addictions by examining their effect on your life. What is your relationship with your phone like? How does your relationship with social medial or gaming affect you, your time, your relationships, your schooling, your job? Has your understanding of the influence of technology changed in regards to Alter’s points?
2. Compose an Analysis Essay in which you examine an aspect of technology and behavior in your life. Use Alter’s points and examples about behavioral addiction to scrutinize the usage of a particular app, game, or other technological influence. What engineering has made this addictive? How is it affecting you or another? What are ways these addictive techniques could be used in positive ways? Negative ways?

Jean Baudrillard and Marie Maclean, “The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media”

Reading Questions:

1. This reading was originally a lecture, and in another language. What are some reasons a translation (from both verbal and the French) may add or subtract the ideas, rhetoric, intent, or comprehension of this essay?
2. This essay begins with a discussion of the mass media, but quickly focuses in on opinion polls. Baudrillard makes many comparisons between the polls and the public—a game, a mirror, an operational system—which of these resonates with you most? Using the text, explain this comparison and its application to media and society as we know it today.

Writing Questions:

1. Compose an Analysis Essay in which you examine the way we interact with the mass media today. Use Baudrillard’s points about media and political polls’ influence on society’s thinking to support your ideas. Are the masses deliberately consuming media to avoid responsibility or thinking? Are we in a “double bind” with the way we consume media and the way media manipulates us? Is media playing a game of information, and is it in contrast to the game of truth?
2. Compose a Synthesis Essay that brings Baudrillard into conversation with Nicholas Carr (“Is Google Making US Stupid?”). Baudrillard discusses the idea of how media changes the mind of the populace, and Carr speculates on how the internet is changing our brains. Your essay should discuss current trends regarding media, the internet, and our changing minds. Incorporate ideas from both Baudrillard and Carr to support your claims.

Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

Reading Questions:

1. Carr discusses the influence of the internet on his process of reading and writing. His examples include other times a new technology has changed the way people think. Choose one of these examples, and discuss how this development changed a society. How does that example relate specifically to the shifts the internet has created in our society?
2. Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (qtd. in Carr 62). What are some pros and cons to information being so easily accessible? Is having a second brain in your pocket making your human brain less functional? Is intelligence irrelevant in the new society? What are Carr’s conclusions, and how do they match with your own?

Writing Questions:

1. Compose a Summary and Response Essay in which you summarize Carr’s article, including claims, main ideas, and important examples. Then, discuss how Carr explores the way his mind used to respond to reading and thinking, and how he can tell his mind is changing, in regards to the internet. Has the internet changed the way you think? If you’ve grown up with the internet, how can you tell? Do you feel you can read and think clearly, for sustain lengths of time? Or do you feel more, as Carr writes, “I once was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (57).
2. Compose an Analysis Essay that follows up on Carr’s exploration. Does Google make us smarter? Or less smart? Is Google rewiring how we think? Is that good, or bad? Does thinking like the internet make us more robotic, or more human? Be sure to use Carr’s examples to support your argument.

Nicholas Carr, “Tracking is an Assault on Liberty with Real Dangers”

Reading Questions:

1. Consider this statement from the essay: “Personalization’s evil twin is manipulation.” What exactly does this mean?  According to Carr, what dangers can result from manipulation?
2. Carr mentions that the lack of privacy can lead to our being victimized by “crooks, con men, and creeps.” Discuss situations in which you have been victimized online in some manner, or in which someone you know has been exploited, defrauded, or maligned.

Writing Questions:

1. Compose a Summary and Response Essay in which you summarize Carr’s article, including claims, main ideas, and important examples. Then, explain your own response to Carr’s claim that our society is starting to “to devalue the concept of privacy, to see it as outdated and unimportant.” To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
2. Carr claims that because the Internet can make so much of our personal information known, it makes us lose our sense of identity and free will. Compose an Analysis Essay in which you evaluate this claim and the evidence that Carr provides to support it. What validity do you see in this claim? Finally, consider the alternative argument that the Internet actually allows a greater ability to express ourselves and to develop our identity. Is this argument any more valid that Carr’s? You may draw on your personal experience to explain your ideas.

Shira Chess, Nathaniel Evans, and Joyya JaDawn Baines, “What Does a Gamer Look Like? Video Games, Advertising, and Diversity”

Reading Questions:

1. Chess et al. discuss a societal idea of a “gamer” (they write “cultural archetype”) and why we might perceive gamers in that way. How much of our perception of who “should” or “should not” be playing video games is dependent on this idea? When you think of gamers, what type of person do you imagine? Does this idea hinder who plays video games?
2. This essay was written using analysis of commercials from 2013. In the ten years since those commercials aired, has the representation of gamers changed? Are there more women or people of color playing games in advertisements? Despite what advertisers might be doing, are the people gaming now more diverse than perceived in 2013?

Writing Questions:

1. Compose a Summary and Response Essay in which you summarize this article, including claims, main ideas, and important examples. Then, discuss how advertising affects your ideas of gamers and gaming. Does video game advertising affect how welcome you feel in a gaming community? Chess et al. focus on gaming platforms, but do these ideas carry over to other games you might play (on your phone, on the PC, etc.)? Use examples from the text to support your response.
2. Compose a Synthesis Essay that brings Chess et al. into conversation with Adam Alter (“Irresistible”). Consider the idea of apps and games as deliberately addictive; how do advertisements play a role in this addiction? If advertisements are targeted to specific demographics, what does that say about the programing design for addictive apps? Are those addictive qualities more likely to be successful with certain demographics? How else might addiction and gaming culture go together? Use examples from both texts to support your argument.

Malcolm Gladwell, “Small Change”

Reading Questions:

1. Gladwell continually compares “strong-tie” and “weak-tie” relationships and the kind of protest activity responded to by each. What are the differences in these relationships? What are the differences in collaboration with each of these groups? Do you think most people have more strong-tie or weak-tie relationships today?
2. Gladwell also makes comparisons between the Civil Rights movement and more contemporary movements—such as the “Arab Spring” of the 2010s; as well as campaigns for Darfur. Which movements does Gladwell feel are more effective? Why? Is contemporary activism working? Explain.

Writing Questions:

1. Compose a Summary and Response Essay in which you summarize Gladwell’s article, including claims, main ideas, and important examples. Then, discuss how contemporary political activism functions, and how effective these groups are. Are these movements primarily online? Have we, as a society, “forgotten what activism is” as Gladwell states? Have you been active in any online activism (see Evan and Ivanna’s phone story for example)? Can activism on social media be effective?
2. Compose an Analysis Essay that evaluates the terms and claims of Gladwell’s essay. Are all online relationships “weak-ties?” Does all activism have to be “high-risk?” Is it possible to achieve societal change with social media and low-risk activism? Incorporate Gladwell’s comparisons to support your argument.

Jim Harper, “It’s Modern Trade: Web Users Get as Much as They Give”

Reading Questions:

1. The author, Jim Harper, notes in the opening paragraph that if we surf the web, then we are part of the “information economy.” Note the word “economy,” when we might have expected “age” or “culture.”  What makes the choice of “economy” so important to this essay?
2. Does the author sufficiently answer these questions: “Who is gathering the information? What are they doing with it? How might this harm me? How do I stop it?”

Writing Questions:

1. Compose a Summary and Response Essay in which you summarize Harper’s article, including claims, main ideas, and important examples. Then, explain your response to Harper’s argument that Google and similar sources are very useful and efficient (for themselves and for us citizens) due to their use of tracking—the discovery of important consumer information. Do you agree that this is a good reason for extensive tracking?  Or do you believe that there is a violation of privacy?
2. Compose a Synthesis essay that brings Harper into conversation with Nicholas Carr’s “Tracking is an Assault on Liberty with Real Dangers”. Both writers are interested in tracking, but they come at this issue in different ways. How do their ideas line up or differ? What is your own perspective on this issue? Be sure to use examples from both texts to support your argument.

James McWilliams, “Saving the Self in the Age of the Selfie”

Reading Questions:

1. McWilliams suggests that our smart phones and social media take away our ability to become uniquely ourselves—that the internet tells us who to be. He uses Socrates and Heidegger as examples of thinkers who have been concerned about technology affecting people in this way for centuries. What are some ways the internet and smart phones are different from other technologies? How might social media be even more invasive when it comes to developing our true selves?
2. One of the ways McWilliams suggests we develop an uncompromised self is to spend time alone. What are ways smartphones are an obstacle to spending time alone? How are some ways we can cultivate our inner lives despite technology’s constant interference?

Writing Questions:

1. Compose an Analysis Essay in which you delve deeper into the ways technology and smart phones interfere with our most authentic selves. What are ways McWilliams suggests technology is an obstacle to our development? What can we do to develop the self? Use McWilliam’s essay as a basis to your analysis.
2. Compose a Synthesis essay that brings McWilliams into conversation with Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” One argues that we are losing our authentic selves, and the other discusses the idea of how our brains function. How are these concerns related? Is one concern more dire than the other? How do we move forward, making sure people in society develop as fully as possible? Be sure to use examples from both texts to support your argument.

Additional Readings on Media and Technology

1. Jon Cohen, “How a Horror Story Haunts Science”
2. William Deresiewicz, “The End of Solitude”
3. Jib Fowles, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals”
4. Rohit Karnik and Robert S. Langer, “Rebuilding Ourselves: Ushering in an Age of Synthetic Organs and Targeted Medicine”
5. Jean Kilbourne, “Hidden Persuaders: Advertising’s Toxic Effects”
6. Alice Park, “The CRISPR Pioneers”
7. James Poniewozik, “Reality TV Has a Positive Influence on Society”
8. Hillary Rosner, “All Too Human”
9. Sam Ross-Brown, “Net Neutrality and the Fight for Social Justice”
10. Sherry Turkle, “The Flight from Conversation”
11. Sherry Turkle, “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk”
12. Jean M. Twenge, “Has the Smartphone Destroyed a Generation?”
13. Lori Ann Wagner, “When Your Smartphone Is Too Smart for Your Own Good”
14. Alison Stein Wellner, “Lost in Translation”
15. Alex Williams, “Quality Time Redefined”