Due 9/25/18

With the extreme advancement in technology in the world in recent years, the ability to write is literally at everyone’s finger tips, more than ever before. This leads to skeptical questions asking if this extreme ease leads to better writing, or simply just more of it. In Clive Thompson’s Public Thinking, he argues that this public forum called the Internet in fact leads to an improvement of writing, along with many other benefits for people of all ages. With websites that allow people to write stories, comment on other’s stories, or simply blog about their lives, there has never been a better and easier way to express one’s feelings publicly or have an outlet for creative writing. This concept of public thinking has affected writers in many ways, including an improvement in writing, knowledge, and the way they think and see the world. 

People have written in journals for decades; jotting down their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Some may do this to simply keep record of things happening to them, but according to Thompson, writing these things down helps clarify their thoughts. He assures that professional writers have claimed “writing forces them to distill their vague notions into clear ideas” (51). While something may be unclear in their heads, writing it down helps them unravel it and understand. Not only writers feel this way, but famous poets have also commented on this claim.  Thompson includes Cecil Day-Lewis’ quote: “We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand,” to further back up this idea (51). The internet provides an online forum not only for people to have an outlet to share thoughts with others, but to also be able to understand their own thoughts as well. This is what is beautiful about modern-day technology, writing to the masses is just as simple as writing for yourself. Due to public thinking, clarifying one’s thoughts has never been so simple and easy.

Thompson’s best and most noticeable strength is his ability to mix in evidence with his claims. He uses a variety of sources including statistics, quotes, and personal experiences. His claims are powerful and persuasive because of the evidence he chooses. In the beginning, Thompson starts with a story about a Kenyan blogger and her political motive behind her desire to write. She is not anyone famous or well-known, but her story speaks to the audience, and was a great selection by Thompson. After this story, he transitions into the plethora of information and words that are found on the Internet. The exact quotes and data he uses was perfect to back up this claim that there is a multitude of writing on the Internet, and no other kind of evidence would have this same effect on the audience. To back up his claim that writing clarifies thinking, he uses the words of famous poets and writers. Since he used these quotes, he was able to establish credibility with the audience, because they can learn about writing’s effects from actual famous writers. Thompson’s main strength is the evidence he chose to use for each exact claim, because each certain kind adds the right effect he intended to have on the audience. 

Due 9/20/18

With the extreme advancement in technology in the world in recent years, the ability to write is literally at everyone’s finger tips, more than ever before. This leads to skeptical questions asking if this extreme ease leads to better writing, or simply just more of it. In Clive Thompson’s Public Thinking, he argues that this public forum called the Internet in fact leads to an improvement of writing, along with many other benefits for people of all ages. With websites that allow people to write stories, comment on other’s stories, or simply blog about their lives, there has never been a better and easier way to express one’s feelings publicly or have an outlet for creative writing. This concept of public thinking has affected writers in many ways, including an improvement in writing, knowledge, and the way they think and see the world. 

People have written in journals for decades; jotting down their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Some may do this to simply keep record of things happening to them, but according to Thompson, writing these things down helps clarify their thoughts. He says that professional writers have claimed “writing forces them to distill their vague notions into clear ideas” (51). While something may be unclear in their heads, writing it down helps them unravel it and understand. Not only writers feel this way, but famous poets have also commented on this claim.  Thompson includes Cecil Day-Lewis’ quote: “We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand,” to further back up this idea (51). The internet provides an online forum not only for people to have an outlet to share thoughts with others, but to also be able to understand their own thoughts as well. This is what is beautiful about modern-day technology, writing to the masses is just as simple as writing for yourself. Due to public thinking, clarifying one’s thoughts has never been so simple and easy.

Due 9/18/18

1. Consider how Thompson’s ideas from “Public Thinking” connect to your everyday life. 

Thompson’s ideas from “Public Thinking” made me connect his statistics and claims to my everyday life. According to Thompson, each day, there are 154 billion emails, 500 million tweets, and over 1 million blog posts composed. When I think about my life, I usually spend around 30 minutes a day going through my Twitter feed, reading hundreds of tweets. I send and receive a couple emails a day, and send and receive even more texts than all of the above in a single day. I don’t blog or write tweets very often, but I personally do spend most of my time writing for school on my iPad or simply sending texts and emails. Probably half of the writing I do is formally for my classes, and the other half I use abbreviations and shortcuts to communicate with my friends. 

2. Which examples were more relatable or more convincing to you? Be specific. Feel free to use personal anecdotes and quotes from the text to support your reflective response.

Like I said before, most of my writing is used to text and snapchat my friends. His example of “text messages are terse, but globally they’re our most frequent piece of writing: 12 billion per day” is an insane number and seems quite ridiculous, but it does not at all shock me. I have easily sent hundreds of texts in a day somedays and others not so many, but it’s definitely an everyday thing for me. 

One example and claim that I never really thought about was the fact that before the internet, mostly everyone barely wrote at all. Thompson states, “Most people rarely wrote anything at al for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction after graduating from high school or college” before the internet came along. It is crazy to compare that to our generation of writing, where everyone composes hundreds of texts, emails, and social media posts a day. I can’t imagine not writing as much as I do, it is a nice form of expression and an easy way to record your thoughts. 

I also really like the section about writing for personal reasons, like stories and poems. Writing in a journal is a great way to clarify our own thoughts and keep it there as a record. I liked the quote by Cecil Day-Lewis; “If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it… We do not write in order to be understood; we write on order to understand.” I never thought about it this way, because I don’t write poems or stories, just occasionally write in a journal, and it’s very true that you write to understand and get a grasp of your thoughts rather than to clarify them for others to understand.

3. After reading Thompson’s piece, how would you paraphrase his main argument in your own words?

After reading Thompson’s piece, I would say his argument is that all this writing is good for us. Writing down personal thoughts, ideas, and even communicating with others strengthens ability to translate thoughts into words. Our generation as a whole is more educated, even thought we often abbreviate words or use text slang, we are more intelligent because of our ability to write and write well. We are constantly using our brains to formulate more than just thoughts, but words and sentences, that are different from speaking, we write them down and they become permanent and something more; something that older generations weren’t lucky enough to experience. 

4. Identify what do you see as the three most important claims, and discuss the evidence he uses to support these claims. Provide a quotation for each claim (use the “starter” template on page 73 of the reader).

Thompson claims that writing improves your memory. Like the activity we did in class, writing things down helps you remember them later. He says “write about something and you’ll remember it better,” and refers to this as the “generation effect.” Another claim is that today’s college students write better than college students from decades ago. He says that they write longer pieces, talk more about arguments and statistical data rather than personal experiences, and make less grammatical errors. He also argues that with the advancement of technologies and mobile devices, there will be way more space for public thinking online, which I agree with. Since humans are naturally curious, social, and creative we will colonize whichever new technologies will come our way, and make them into social forums for public thinking, like we’ve been doing for decades now. 

5. Identify two rebuttals (places where Thompson addresses opposing views).

Thompson argues that college students write not only as well as college students in the past, but they may even write better. He uses Stanford University English professor Andrea Lunsford’s research on today’s college students and how they write to refute the claim that students in the past were better writers. He also discusses the opposing view that although everyone is writing more, is any of it any good? Thompson refutes that and says yes, it is good. Sometime there are abbreviations and slang used, but there will always be great writers, no matter how easy it gets to write. 

September 12, 2018

1. What did you think of the text? Which passages seemed most interesting, or connected in some way to your own experience online?

I thought this excerpt was really interesting, I guess I have never thought about how much our recent generations write. We write hundreds of texts a day, post statuses on the internet almost every day, and publish articles or blog posts weekly. Just a few decades ago writing this often was not common at all, just letters every now and then. Growing up in this era of technology, I never realized how much I personally write on the daily, and reading this really highlighted that for me. I liked the passage explaining that famous poets or the average person don’t really write about things they already know. “‘I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind,’” “‘We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.’” I never thought about it like that, but I really liked that quote from Cecil Day-Lewis, and made me think about why I write. I don’t write much online, I mainly write texts and emails to friends or teachers, or the occasional journal entry. This excerpt really opened my eyes to this era of writing, and I’m proud to be apart of it.

2. What seem to be Thompson’s main claims? What did you think of these claims?

I like how Thompson used a lot of statistics and comparisons to show the difference in writing cultures of now and decades ago. He highlights the number of tweets, emails, facebook statuses, texts, and more that are sent everyday in the United States alone, which creates a powerful argument that our current generation is so word-heavy. I honestly didn’t really pick up on much of an argument while I read through this, just paid close attention to his details and statistics, because it’s mind-boggling how much Americans write and post and read, especially compared to times when their only option was to compose a hand-written letter and trust the postal service to deliver it. I like that our generation is very into writing, because that means for the most part we’re all in touch with our thoughts and feelings, and we have the desire to share these thoughts all the time. I think Thompson could have developed a stronger argument and highlighted claims, because I didn’t really pick up on many.

September 10

• What did you think of Rifkin’s argument, or find most interesting about it?

Rifkin’s argument is clearly that despite what most people believe, animals do have feelings and can “feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement, and even love.” It is a weird concept, because everyone since the beginning of time knows that humans are the most intelligent and developed species, but I never really considered the idea that animals could have very similar emotions and feelings as us. I kept thinking about the movie Planet of the Apes and how making animals, like apes, is seen as dangerous and scary (which I agree with upon watching this terrifying depiction of animals wreaking havoc on humans). I think this concept is very interesting, because it’s not something people talk about, or maybe don’t want to talk about, since slaughtering animals has been a part of our history. I would love to hear more about this research, but I think I can speak for everyone when I say the discovery might change a lot in our food, clothing, and hunting industries in the world.

• Read the “starter template for discussing claims” on page 73 (reader). Use this template to write about two of Rifkin’s main claims.

1. One of Rifkin’s main claims is animals can experience grief, Rifkin asserts that they can surprisingly feel a range of emotions that have always been thought to be unique to humans.

2. According to Rifkin, the information everyone has known since the beginning of time regarding animals’ emotions and feelings is actually very false and new research has been debunking these old myths.

3. For example, Rifkin states that “elephants will often stand next to their dead kin for days, occasionally touching their bodies with their trunks.”

4. What he means by this is elephants, among many animals, can actually experience grief and sadness. In other words, they can tell when their kin passes away, and actually experience different ways of grieving than humans, like touching their trunks to their dead kins’ bodies.

1. One of Rifkin’s main claims is pigs crave attention and affection, Rifkin asserts that pigs can be depressed when isolated or denied play time with one another.  

2. According to Rifkin, animals need to be treated more humanely, because research has been funded to look into their mental and behavioral states.

3. For example, Rifkin states that “the lack of mental and physical stimuli can result in deterioration of health.”

4. What he means by this is animals need affection and companionship in order to survive and maintain their health. In other words, animals are just like humans in their need for relationships and without them, we’d wither away.

• In a separate paragraph describe some of the main kinds of evidence used to support these claims.

Rifkin backs up his claims that animals can experience grief with the evidence that “elephants will often stand next to their dead kin for days, occasionally touching their bodies with their trunks.” This type of evidence is an example. Rifkin also uses statistics and facts from different companies’ research to provide accurate findings about animals. He also uses comparison to show Germany’s ways of doing things; “In Germany, the government is encouraging pig farmers to give each pig 20 seconds of human contact each day.” This comparison provides an example of what the United States can do to aid in pigs’ need for affection and contact. 

• Discuss two strategies Rifkin uses to persuade his audience.

Rifkin’s main two strategies used to persuade his audience are exemplification and big names. Rifkin uses a lot of statistics from research that informs the audience on their new findings. All of this information is relatively new to me, and the statistics he included really shocked me and made me sad, which was most likely his intended purpose. He also uses big names like fast food companies: Burger King, McDonald’s, KCF, and different well-known universities: Purdue and Oxford University to gather ethos. By dropping these big names, people are naturally more interested and can trust his information when it is coming from intelligent universities. 

• Read Parry’s “Branding a Condition.” What is Parry’s overall argument? What did you find most interesting/useful about this text?

Parry highlights the many benefits of branding a condition, and almost convinces the user to try it out if they are interested in businesses and marketing. I thought this text was interesting, because condition branding seems very sneaky and dishonest, but I guess it is a very useful way to market a product to the masses.

• What does Parry’s argument suggest about the way advertisers and marketers try to persuade audiences? Have you seen or heard of any similar methods of persuading people?

The Listerine example shows that the businessmen are kind of taking advantage of the people and being dishonest just to trick them into buying their product. I’m sure people do this all the time in our industry, by tricking the public into buying a medication for a certain “disease.” It is crazy to think people will do anything for money, but it is not shocking. 

In Kristof’s “Do We Have the Courage to Stop This?” he challenges the United States’ ability to regulate guns. He clearly states that he wishes to regulate the buying and selling of guns in America and presents a great argument through his use of claims and evidence, along with great rebuttals. One of these rebuttals is “don’t say that it won’t make a difference because crazies will always be able to get a gun” and “don’t bother with the argument that if more people carried guns, they would deter shooters or interrupt them.” He quickly shuts down these popular counter arguments to the controversial discussion of gun control in America. The way he presents these rebuttals seems he has the purpose to prove he is knowledgeable and has researched this topic a lot, so he is aware of the obvious counter arguments. Kristof immediately points towards these claims people make in opposition to gun control and makes the reader understand why these claims then seem so faulty. 

In Rifkin’s argumentative piece about animals’ ability to feel just like humans, many preconceived facts are debunked. He argues that many studies have shown that animals do in fact have feelings, and actually suffer when they do not spend time with one another. He says, “some philosophers and animal behaviorists have long argued that other animals are not capable of self-awareness because they lack a sense of individualism,” and, “it’s commonly believed that other animals have no sense of their mortality and are unable to comprehend the concept of their own death.” He debunks these preconceived ideas with real studies that surprisingly are being run by fast food chains. Rifkin writes these rebuttals as if he is very confident in his research and no other research will change his mind. This confidence makes the reader believe in what he is telling them.

Kristof, “Do we have the courage to stop this?”

1. What seems to be the overall argument?

Kristof’s overall argument is to clearly regulate the buying, distribution, and use of guns in the United States. He explicitly states he does not want to abolish guns altogether, because he knows the United States would never let that happen, but he wants to minimize and even end the ridiculous violence that comes along with our country’s loose laws on gun control.

2. What are some of Kristof’s main claims?

Kristof uses many statistics on gun violence in America to show there needs to be a change in the accessibility of guns. He also compares the fact that the US has stricter laws on things like ladders and adopting a pet than buying a gun, which really makes the reader think.

3. What kinds of claim does he present (see reader pages 15-16)

Kristof uses many claims about facts, like percentages of school shootings and which laws exist on less harmful things than guns. There are also many comparison claims that I mentioned previously. There are also some claims about causes and consequences, like how failure to create stricter gun laws will in turn allow more tragedies like mass shootings to occur in America.

4. List some of the main types of evidence presented (see reader 17 – 21) and discuss how persuasive they are.

The main types of evidence presented are facts and data, statistical data and surveys, and analogies. Personally, reading statistical facts like the number of mass shootings there have been in America in a certain amount of time always makes me think. Also the analogies Kristof was making between the strict laws of things like ladders and adopting a pet compared to guns really made me think and question why a killing machine wouldn’t have more laws. His evidence was really strong in creating persuasion.

5. Identify two strategies Kristof uses to persuade his audience

Kristof occasionally used a big name like Obama to create ethos to persuade the audience that if big names agree with him, people are more likely to trust and agree with him. He also uses exemplification with examples like facts, statistics,  and data to back up his argument with cold hard facts. These make the reader think because maybe they didn’t know an exact statistic. 

6. What is your response to the text (general thoughts or discussion of how effective you think it was).

I personally am pretty passionate about the need for stricter gun laws in the United States, so I did not need much persuasion, but he definitely used some great statistics and quotes to persuade the reader. His claims were very effective, because they really make the reader think and question why our government hasn’t done something about guns yet. They are a tragedy that have created so much violence in our country, yet they contain less regulations than ladders. I felt very connected to his argument, because he seems very passionate and created great evidence to support his claims. 

Kristof, “Some inconvenient gun facts for liberals”

1. What seems to be the overall argument?

Kristof’s main argument in this piece is to just educate ourselves, people hear so many statistics and can easily be fed wrong information about gun laws in America. His main argument is instead of the left and right fighting each other, we all need to step back and look at the cold, hard facts then make decisions off these.

2. What are some of Kristof’s main claims?

He argues that so many liberals see guns as the doers of all wrong, and that without them the world will finally know peace, which he proves wrong. His claim is that yes, guns are violent and the people behind guns are violent, but there was actually a decrease in the gun homicide rate since the number of guns in America has increased by more than 50 percent since 1993. He also debunks liberals’ natural tendency to believe conservatives want the exact opposite of them. Many conservatives agree with the argument to have stricter laws on guns, they just dont believe to eradicate them completely. 

3. What kinds of claim does he present (see reader pages 15-16)

Kristof mainly uses claims about facts. He uses many statistics on guns and gun homicides, which kind of debunk the facts that liberals thought they knew. All of his facts leave little room to question his argument, which gathers trust in the reader.

4. List some of the main types of evidence presented (see reader 17 – 21) and discuss how persuasive they are.

Again, the main types of evidence used are facts and data, which were very effective in persuading the reader. I personally like to know the cold, hard facts because they are unquestionable, they are statistics that cant be argued with, which creates a very solid argument in my mind. His use of facts definitely persuades the reader because he comes off as almost unbiased, just providing facts to the reader, so you want to believe what he’s saying and you trust his argument because his facts are not flawed.

5. Identify two strategies Kristof uses to persuade his audience

Again, he mainly used facts and statistics to back up his claims, sp he persuaded his audience through exemplification.

6. What is your response to the text (general thoughts or discussion of how effective you think it was). 

I really liked that Kristof provided two different texts on the same topic but each were a different viewpoint, which makes him seem unbiased and trustworthy. He backed up his argument well with undeniable facts and statistics, which make his argument stronger in my opinion. I love that this article’s purpose is to debunk what most liberals believe about guns,  but he does it from an unbiased point, he does not come off as a conservative just trying to piss off liberals, instead he informs the reader of what is actually going on in the United States. 

Hi, I’m Deegan Roecker. I’m from Redondo Beach, California which is outside of Los Angeles. My current major is athletic training because I hope to one day be a trainer for a college or professional sports team. I was a student trainer in high school and worked for our boys football and soccer teams, attended all their games, and helped them when they got injured. I sometimes journal when I’m bored but it’s usually once a month at most because I never think to do it. All in all, I’m more of a science and math person than an English person, so I don’t write much.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton