5-30 If we have time, we will cover a Hasan Minhaj essay topic. We will cover Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
6-4: Peer Edit
6-6 Essay #5 due on turnitin; Portfolio 2 Grade Check in class
Essay 5 Due 6-6-18
This is your Capstone Essay. It requires 3 sources for your Works Cited to get credit.
Option A
Read Jelani Cobb’s “Black Like Her” and "I Refuse to Rubberneck Rachel Dolezal’s Train Wreck" by Kitanya Harrison and write an essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the contention that it is morally objectionable for white woman Rachel Dolezal to fabricate an identity to pass as being black. Also consult the parody of Rachel Dolezal in the Atlanta episode “B.A.N.” in which Paper Boi discusses “trans-racial” issues with Montague. You can also consult Netflix documentary The Rachel Divide.
Option B
Take yet another topic we haven’t yet covered from Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act and develop an argumentative thesis.
Option C
Read Jessica McCrory Calarco’s essay “‘Free-Range’ Parenting’s Unfair Double Standard” and support or refute her claim. See Washington Post and Reason’s “The Fragile Generation.”
Option D
Read Brendan Foht’s “The Case Against Human Gene Editing” and write an essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the claim that gene editing poses moral and political problems that we cannot handle. For a contrary opinion, see "A case against a moratorium on gene editing" in The Conversation. Consult NYT "Why Are Scientists So Upset About the First CRISPR Babies?" See Vox account of "terrifying new chapter" in CRISPR. Also consult Jennifer Kahn Ted Talk video.
Option E
Read David Brooks’ “How We Are Ruining America” and support, refute, or complicate the contention that Brooks has written a misleading, stupid, deceptive, and grossly wrong-minded essay.
Option F
Read Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy” and address the claim that Bloom, trying to sell lots of books, is writing a disingenuous argument, relying more on semantics and trickery than substance, to write a sensationalistic, hyped-up thesis.
Option G
Read “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and write an argumentative essay that supports, refutes, or complicates the authors’ claim that a certain type of coddling is destroying young people’s mental health.
Option H
Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay “Giving Up on Preventative Care” and support, refute, or complicate her thesis that we should resist the preventive care of America’s medical establishment.
Option I
Based on the following content, develop an argumentative thesis about the role of technology and social media creating a surveillance state. Read Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
Option J
In the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams" and Hasan Minhaj's Netflix 72-minute comedy special "Homecoming King," compare and contrast the chimera of social status as a chimera between a white man, Dexter Green, and a self-described member of the "New Brown America," Hasan Minhaj. What special challenges do immigrants of color face as they try to find belonging, acceptance, and social status in America? How do these immigrants struggle to fit in with their American peers and fit their parents' expectations at the same time? How does this conflict add pressure to their quest to find status and belonging in America?
Option K
In the context of Madeleine Pape's Guardian essay "I was sore at losing to Caster Semeyna," develop an argumentative thesis about the controversy surrounding Semeyna's desire to compete in women's sports. You can also consult the NYT editorial "The Myth of Testosterone," "The Controversy Around Caster Semeyna Explained," and "The Caster Semeyna Ruling Is a Disgrace to the Sporting World." See PBS video. Also see Vox article "'I am a woman and I am fast.'" Also see Washington Post on the debate on what is scientific or not about gender.
Option L
Develop an argument that supports or refutes Chris Hughes' claim that Facebook should be broken up into smaller parts as presented in his essay, "It's Time to Break Up Facebook." Consult NYT's 5 Takeaways from Hughes' editorial and Alexis Madrigal's "We Don't Want to Know How Powerful Mark Zuckerberg Is" in The Atlantic. Also watch Chris Hughes' video. For counterarguments, consult Nick Clegg's NYT's piece "Breaking Up Facebook Is Not the Answer." Also see NYT editorial "Can Facebook Be Fixed? Should It Be?"
Option M
Read Conor Friedersdorf’s “In Defense of Harvey Weinstein’s Harvard Lawyer” and agree or disagree with the contention that representing someone as monstrous and diabolical as Harvey Weinstein performs a civic good. Also consult David French's "Harvard Launches an Attack on the Culture of Liberty." Also see NYT editorial "Harvard Betrays a Law Professor--and Itself."
Option N
Justin Peters' essay "Joe Rogan's Galaxy Brain," published in liberal-slanting Slate magazine, presents an argument that Joe Rogan and his podcast guest philosopher Sam Harris are wrong to believe in giving a platform to hateful voices. In the words of Peters, Rogan and Harris are morally wrong in their following premise: "[Liberals and progressives holding] people accountable for what they say and what those words do is an offense far worse than saying cruel, racist, and divisive things in the first place. The reputational damage done to the utterer is the real social problem, not the more diffuse damage done by the utterance."
Joe Rogan defends giving a platform to Alt-Right "crackpots" while talking to comedian Neil Brennan in this podcast segment published on You Tube under title "Why Joe Rogan Has Right Wing Guests on His Show." Rogan argues that deplatforming is dangerous to American democracy and freedom of speech. This notion of deplatforming is under further controversy by democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren refusing to go on Fox News because she argues that Fox News is a "hate-for-profit racket." But others, like Megan Day in her essay "Elizabeth Warren Should Have Gone on Fox News," argue that Warren's virtue signaling is actually misguided and shows she is too interested in showcasing her moral purity than she is in engaging people with contrary ideas to her own. Even liberal MSNBC's "Morning Joe" criticizes Warren for not going into enemy territory to argue her message.
In the context of the deplatforming controversy surrounding Joe Rogan and Elizabeth Warren, develop an argumentative thesis about deplatforming: Is engaging in conversations with opposing voices a way of giving harmful platform to hate and moral bankruptcy or is this cross-cultural conversation a way of shedding light on evil and finding opportunity to persuade one's opponents?
There can be a middle-ground in this debate. For example, one could justify having Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson on their show while eschewing a complete troll like Alex Jones.
Also consider that if you have strong opinions, they should be worth fighting for. Joe Rogan, who does MMA training and fighting, is a fighter. He doesn't mind going into the belly of beast and fighting the battles of the day. Elizabeth Warren, some might argue, is a pacifist who is eager to showboat her virtue to her crowd of the already converted but too cowardly to engage in battle with the enemy. If she can't fight, is she a worthy candidate? Some say no. Others say her moral purity is precisely her appeal. Frame the debate under your own terms.
Option I
Based on the following content, develop an argumentative thesis about the role of technology and social media creating a surveillance state. Read Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
Excerpts from "Alexa, Should We Trust You?"
(Subheadings my own)
Conquering Private Space in Increments (You make a chicken bald by plucking one feather at a time)
Privacy concerns have not stopped the march of these devices into our homes, however. Amazon doesn’t disclose exact figures, but when I asked how many Echo devices have been sold, a spokeswoman said “tens of millions.” By the end of last year, more than 40 million smart speakers had been installed worldwide, according to Canalys, a technology-research firm. Based on current sales, Canalys estimates that this figure will reach 100 million by the end of this year. According to a 2018 report by National Public Radio and Edison Research, 8 million Americans own three or more smart speakers, suggesting that they feel the need to always have one within earshot. By 2021, according to another research firm, Ovum, there will be almost as many voice-activated assistants on the planet as people. It took about 30 years for mobile phones to outnumber humans. Alexa and her ilk may get there in less than half that time.
One reason is that Amazon and Google are pushing these devices hard, discounting them so heavily during last year’s holiday season that industry observers suspect that the companies lost money on each unit sold. These and other tech corporations have grand ambitions. They want to colonize space. Not interplanetary space. Everyday space: home, office, car. In the near future, everything from your lighting to your air-conditioning to your refrigerator, your coffee maker, and even your toilet could be wired to a system controlled by voice.
Technology Changes Bring New Social Orders
The ramifications of this shift are likely to be wide and profound. Human history is a by-product of human inventions. New tools—wheels, plows, PCs—usher in new economic and social orders. They create and destroy civilizations. Voice technologies such as telephones, recording devices, and the radio have had a particularly momentous impact on the course of political history—speech and rhetoric being, of course, the classical means of persuasion. Radio broadcasts of Adolf Hitler’s rallies helped create a dictator; Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats edged America toward the war that toppled that dictator.
Perhaps you think that talking to Alexa is just a new way to do the things you already do on a screen: shopping, catching up on the news, trying to figure out whether your dog is sick or just depressed. It’s not that simple. It’s not a matter of switching out the body parts used to accomplish those tasks—replacing fingers and eyes with mouths and ears. We’re talking about a change in status for the technology itself—an upgrade, as it were. When we converse with our personal assistants, we bring them closer to our own level.
Getting rid of "friction": We become dependent on a frictionless world.
The beauty of Alexa, Reid continued, is that she makes such interactions “frictionless”—a term I’d hear again and again in my conversations with the designers and engineers behind these products. No need to walk over to the desktop and type a search term into a browser; no need to track down your iPhone and punch in your passcode. Like the ideal servant in a Victorian manor, Alexa hovers in the background, ready to do her master’s bidding swiftly yet meticulously.
Frictionlessness is the goal, anyway. For the moment, considerable friction remains. It really is remarkable how often smart speakers—even Google Home, which often outperforms the Echo in tests conducted by tech websites—flub their lines. They’ll misconstrue a question, stress the wrong syllable, offer a bizarre answer, apologize for not yet knowing some highly knowable fact. Alexa’s bloopers float around the internet like clips from an absurdist comedy show. In one howler that went viral on YouTube, a toddler lisps, “Lexa, play ‘Ticker Ticker’ ”—presumably he wants to hear “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
Technology that uses voice will go deeper inside our heads to hijack our brains:
Lacking a face isn’t necessarily a hindrance to a smart speaker. In fact, it may be a boon. Voices can express certain emotional truths better than faces can. We are generally less adept at controlling the muscles that modulate our voices than our facial muscles (unless, of course, we’re trained singers or actors). Even if we try to suppress our real feelings, anger, boredom, or anxiety will often reveal themselves when we speak.
The power of the voice is at its uncanniest when we can’t locate its owner—when it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. There’s a reason God speaks to Adam and Moses. In the beginning was the Word, not the Scroll. In her chilling allegory of charismatic totalitarianism, A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle conjures a demonic version of an all-pervasive voice. IT, the supernatural leader of a North Korea–like state, can insert its voice inside people’s heads and force them to say whatever it tells them to say. Disembodied voices accrue yet more influence from the primal yearning they awaken. A fetus recognizes his mother’s voice while still in the womb. Before we’re even born, we have already associated an unseen voice with nourishment and comfort.
A 2017 study published in American Psychologist makes the case that when people talk without seeing each other, they’re better at recognizing each other’s feelings. They’re more empathetic. Freud understood this long before empirical research demonstrated it. That’s why he had his patients lie on a couch, facing away from him. He could listen all the harder for the nuggets of truth in their ramblings, while they, undistracted by scowls or smiles, slipped into that twilight state in which they could unburden themselves of stifled feelings.
Human shallowness is the final destination:
If I have learned anything in my years of therapy, it is that the human psyche defaults to shallowness. We cling to our denials. It’s easier to pretend that deeper feelings don’t exist, because, of course, a lot of them are painful. What better way to avoid all that unpleasantness than to keep company with emotive entities unencumbered by actual emotions? But feelings don’t just go away like that. They have a way of making themselves known. I wonder how sweet my grandchildren’s dreams will be.
Topic and Sample Thesis
Option I
Based on the following content, develop an argumentative thesis about the role of technology and social media creating a surveillance state. Read Judith Shulevitz’s “Alexa, Should We Trust You?”; Zeynep Tukekci’s “Facebook’s Surveillance Machine”; Siva Vaidhyanthan’s “The Three Major Forces of Surveillance on Facebook”; and video “Safe and Sorry--Terrorism & Mass Surveillance.”
Sample Thesis
Technology seduces us with "persuasion architecture," convenience, "frictionless" tasks, more efficient decision making, more productivity, and more pleasure; however, the end result is a dystopia based on economic decline for the masses, loss of privacy, shallowness, dehumanization, and a general hijacking of the brain resulting in a loss of free will.
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