The Rise of Technology

                Mans’ increasing dependence and usage of technology is a great detriment to society, and yet technology continues to evolve and progress faster than ever before. An article titled, “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal”, on Kurweil’s invention in 1965 of a computer that writes music explains how Kurzweil predicts that society as a whole will be generated by technology – i.e. robots. I believe that this article can be found as highly credible; however, although the article can be considered realistic, I do not find these facts pleasing.

            If technology runs society humans will lose all sense of morals – work ethic morals more precisely. This would lead to an even lazier society than the country is today.  Kurzewil’s theory presents the idea that “[computers] would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are”; thus causing humans to not feel the need to necessarily do anything since practically anything could be provided by technology. Not only will this affect society ethically but I believe it will make us less ‘human’ because, with the rate of technological process taken into consideration, humans will becomes robots themselves in a sense.

            This can be connected to the idea of progress in Brave New World and the slogan of the ‘new world’, "Community, Identity, and Stability". The ideas presented in Kurzweil’s theory leads to a society much similar to the idea expressed in Brave New World. However the idea of singularity presented in Brave New World differs slightly from the idea of singularity in Kurzweil’s theory; Kurzweil believes that singular will be found through artificial intelligence, meaning that “composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions” and etc. will all be done through computers. In fact Brave New World is a satire in itself about technological progress and the corruption of society.

Society is – and always will be – so caught up on the need for more efficiency and more progress. Of course this is not necessarily ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’, but it can be taken out of hand. Searching for new and better methods, research, and etc. is indeed not only good but necessary; however letting technology become such a strong basis of our lives is not – in my opinion – a very progressive move for many reasons that can be compiled into one idea: technology is and never will be completely reliable. And there is also that factor that “Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us”, as expressed in the article “2045”.

Kurzweil’s theory provides much insight on the future of the human race, unfortunately that insight should be taken as a warning. The thought of creating a world where humans will become immortal is completely absurd. Without death there is no progress, although this can be taken as ironic, death – as we all know – is an essential part of life. Without new people born into the world, which will essentially bring in new thoughts, ideas, and creations with them, there can’t be a whole lot of progress. Now this is aside from the fact that computers will provide these new ideas for society; however, this can also be brought back to the fact that computers cannot be reliable for some factors mentioned above.  Overall a singular society that will be virtually ‘ruled’ through technology will in fact lead to an end in the human race, maybe not in terms of death but in terms of the authenticity of humans.

Below is a link to an article that also explains another form of satire in a commonly known movie on the idea of technological progress and the ideas presented in Brave New World.

http://www.pontification.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/223-Wall-E-Anti-capitalist-or-surprisingly-subversive.html

Rhetoric Analysis

Rhetoric is a type of writing tool that can help to produce very effective types writing in any subject. Such tools draw in certain types of readers and present a certain tone in writing, such as: Logos (logical appeal), Ethos (ethical appeal), and pathos (appeal to emotion). However English consists of some writing ‘guidelines’ that are – for the most part - universally well-known and hard to stray away from. This includes things such as using quotes, questions, MLA format, or Schaffer writing. All these tools can produce effective writings but can sometimes lead to a lack of variety in style.

                The essay I chose from the StudentPulse website is “Postmodernism in Vonnegut’s 'Cat’s Cradle'” by Derek Miller. In this essay the author presents the idea of satire in Vonnegut’s novel.  The author begins the essay with a quote, which can be recognized as a traditional ‘rule’ for beginning an essay. However the quote is not a mere inspirational quote from some other source, it is derived from the novel the essay is based upon. On the other hand I feel a lack of connection between the quote and beginning paragraph only because at that point in the essay I am not sure what exactly the quote means. Along the same lines as this the author also uses the basic method of questions to draw in the reader. Questions in the essay such as, “First off, what is postmodernism” effectively draws in the reader to be curious about the question and want to know more. The author also uses ethos and logos within a few sentences to make the writing more efficient. The effective questions can be recognized as logos to bring logic through questions for factual answers, and then answering the questions with quotations from other sources to present the credibility.

                Through description of characters in the novel the author brings about more ethos in the essay by presenting ‘fake’ ideas or people and connects those fictional aspects with real information. The author utilizes characters and dialogue in his essay to present a solid break down of the usage of satire in the novel.

                The author’s set up of the essay also provides an accurate back bone to prove his thesis. He begins the essay with an explanation postmodernism and background to help support the argument that he is trying to make. In other words it is set up by facts, descriptions, and then supporting evidence from the novel or other resources. The only thing however is that the start and middle of the essay provides a great amount of information and descriptions to set a nice flow to the writing, but towards the end of the essay it begins to feel a little ‘chopped’ up. The level of supportive information does not lose effectiveness, but the amount of writing seems to begin to dwindle as the essay goes on.

                The diction of the essay is very effective and seems to fit for the audience that the paper is aimed for. The quality of writing is not low but it is not so high that it cannot be comprehended by majority of people. The author’s writing has a strong ethos and logos but I did not feel much pathos from it mainly because the writing and topic contains a more factual basis, which seems appropriate for the topic of the essay.