TOW #28 - Industries of the Future

In The Industries of the Future, Alec Ross analyzes current technologies in various subjects such as care, medicine, and coding. Through these different fields, Ross explains how he predicts the world will be changed through our advancing technology. An interesting problem that he mentions is the decline of menial jobs, like delivery or waitressing, could lead to many people being out of jobs. However, I think that he failed to look at the possibility of replacing those jobs with jobs for the maintenance of the technology itself.

If there is a padlet where one can order their food at the table, eliminating the need for a waitress, that would work well for the restaurant until the padlet malfunctions. One could spill their drink on it, a child could hit it, or it could simply wear down. However, there will serve a new line of labor that involves the maintenance of technology. One would need to be able to fix the robot in case of emergency, a field that was never needed until the rise of our dependence on technology and robots.

Automation will never be perfect. There is no possibility of every scenario being accounted for, ultimately suggesting that there will always be machines that do not make mistakes. To account for these, there needs to be people that will work alongside the automation and step in when needed. For example, a delivery truck could be monitored by a driver who would only step in when the truck is malfunctioning. The amount of delivery people may decrease, but they will not be totally replaced by machines, at least not in the near future.

Finally, robots fail to create emotional connections between people. The need for emotional support may rise, creating a new field of work involved with caring emotionally for the elderly rather than physically helping them with everyday tasks. Until robots can be created to artificially match human compassion, there will need to be a way for people to forge emotional connections with others. Ultimately, there will be a need for people to care for others for the foreseeable future and there should be a rise in jobs involved with emotional care.

Although the creation of robots will affect jobs, it will not completely deteriorate the lower working class. There will be new lines of labor that will replace the current ones, but there is no need to fear the rise of technology. As time develops, technology will replace current jobs, the way machines replaced factory work from the industrial age, but there will always be new lines of work. It is the responsibility of the citizens to determine what those lines of work are.

TOW #27 - How to Fall in Love

The text describes a time when the author, Mandy Len Catron, tried an experiment out to see if she would fall in love. She had heard about a study that was conducted on two people in which they answer intimate questions and maintain eye contact for four minutes. She recounts the time she spent answer the questions with a friend and reflects back on it and the ideas that our culture has behind love. She did end up falling in love with the man that she answered the questions with, but she said that she may have fell in love with him without the study. The text was composed for young adults who are facing these questions of love and relationships.

Catron uses a personal tone and first person point of view to effectively create a story that reflects on an important day of her life. She uses a colloquial tone that makes her story sound more like a story rather than an informative article. She recounts that, “It’s astounding, really, to hear what someone admires in you. I don’t know why we don’t go around thoughtfully complimenting one another all the time.” This kind of tone makes it seem like she’s talking to a friend instead of writing in a newspaper, making the topic easier to read about because love is an intimate topic. She also uses first person point of view to be reflective on the study. She says that, “I liked learning about myself through my answers, but I liked learning things about him even more.” She’s honest with how the study went for her, and is able to portray this honesty through first person point of view.

The author sums her article up well when she says, “I’ve begun to think love is a more pliable thing than we make it out to be. Arthur Aron’s study taught me that it’s possible — simple, even — to generate trust and intimacy, the feelings love needs to thrive.” She thinks that love is something that is based off of intimacy, and wants to expose that through her experience with the experiment. I think that she accomplished her purpose. She exposes what factors into her love and explains how she reached the level of intellectual intimacy that she did. She created an interesting piece that made me want to look further into the scientific effects of love.

TOW #26 - Head in the (Instagrammed) Clouds

Isabel Evans writes, “Head in the (Instagrammed) Cloud” to discuss social media, particularly instagram and how it affects the life of a young adult. The author is a student at Harvard who admits to being “guilty of everything [she has] mentioned.” Evans writes the text for students at Harvard. Evans made a few comments relating to life at Harvard, such as studying for finals in the Harvard library or boring Harvard Friday nights. However this could apply to any young adult who uses social media. The text was written to address our dependence on social media as social media is a rapidly growing part of society.

To establish her argument, Evans uses first person point of view and allusions. She says, “Most of the time when I’m staring and scrolling, I’m not engaged in any kind of socially productive exercise.” She uses first person point of view to establish ethos. Through her perspective she can explain that she too is affected by social media and can waste an hour on her phone doing practically nothing. This helps the audience agree with her more, but also shows that she knows what she is talking about because she too experienced it.

She also uses allusions to real world events. She says, “So often sites like Twitter and Reddit offer news quicker and more concisely when stories are just breaking. When the lockdown hit our campus after the Boston bombing, I was constantly checking my different feeds rather than relying on the slower CNN.” By having a real event and explaining how social media spread the word, she shows that social media does serve an important part of society and it can help get the word out about big events.

Evans writes this essay to explain that, “it’s important to remember that we should have accomplishments we can really see and touch, not just ones on a touchscreen.” She wants to reach out to students at Harvard and remind them to focus on their real lives and not their instagram life. I think she did accomplish her purpose. She used rhetorical devices well to explain that social media is not a bad thing; she did not attack social media. Instead she said that it’s a good idea to pay attention to one’s life outside of their phone. I think that through her examples and experiences she argues her point well.

IRB Intro Post #4

I decided to read "The Industries of the Future" by Alec Ross for my IRB this marking period. My dad showed this book to me and I was interested in reading it because it talks about businesses that have recently come out that utilize technology in an interesting fashion. I'm really interested in business and wanted to see what the businesses of the future looked like. 

TOW #25 - WWI Propaganda

During World War I, there were many propaganda posters that were created to push citizens to help with the cause. Many factories focused on only creating materials to help with the war, like weaponry. Even though after the war this loss of a market caused a dip in the economy, during the war it was very important for the soldiers that weapons and food were made in excess to help them fight.

Many of these posters involved saving food so that the extra food could be donated to the soldiers. Without this food, soldiers would starve and die, leaving no one to fight the war for Americans. In this particular poster, the author is asking Americans to donate food to the soldiers that are saving them from a German control.

There is a deductive argument in this World War I propaganda poster. The major premise is that in general, well fed soldiers win the war. The minor premise is that if you donate food, you help feed soldiers. So the conclusion is that one should donate their food to help win the war.

The deductive element helps create a strong argument for citizens to donate their food. It outlines the effects of where the food is going and shows that it is beneficial for citizens if they help with the war cause. There is also an emotional appeal in the poster because it clearly states that soldiers are saving your lives, so you need to donate food for those soldiers.

Ultimately, the deductive element organizes the argument so that it has a clear conclusion: donate your food. It is used effectively as an effort to help soldiers get more food. Through the civilian help, soldiers could fight to the best of their ability. These posters most likely helped Americans win the war, as the Allies eventually did win World War I.

TOW #24 - Killing the Rising Sun

The second World War waged on for four years of America’s direct intervention. The main fight was against Japan, as Germany had all but surrendered towards the end of the war. Japan was weary and close to surrender, but Japanese leaders were determined to fight until the death. Americans believed that the only way for the war to end was to fight with similar determination. This led to the decision to drop the atomic bombs on the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Author Bill O'Reilly writes about the war leading up to the decision and the aftermath of the decision. He argues that it was right for the bombs to be dropped, because no one knows how many more American lives would be lost during the remainder of the war. He describes how many scientists were questioning the morality of the bomb, but ultimately both President Franklin Roosevelt and President Truman had decided to let the bomb be dropped if it meant saving American lives. Truman sympathizes with the many Japanese lives that were lost, but believes that it was ultimately for the better.

I agree with part of O’Reilly’s claim, that the dropping of the first bomb had some reasons to be done, and although in retrospect the war would have probably ended soon regardless of the bomb being dropped, in the moment the president had to make a decision, and it was for the better of the United States. I think that he has some validity in his argument, even if the morality of the decision is not entirely intact.

However, I do not believe that dropping the second bomb was entirely necessary. The first bomb killed thousands of people and wrecked havoc on Japanese citizens. Once the word of the first bomb spread, the Japanese decided to surrender until certain conditions. However, Americans wanted an unconditional surrender, and ruthlessly attacked another city in order to receive that surrender. I think that the loss of lives in Nagasaki was not worth the conditions of surrender, especially if the bombs were only supposed to be dropped out of necessity.

Bill O’Reilly makes a compelling argument for the dropping of the two atomic bombs. I agree that there is validity in his argument, and that in the time that it seemed necessary to drop the bombs. However, in retrospect there may have been a better solution that could have saved two cities from being brutally burned.

TOW #23 - Pilots' Confidence

Many pilot only manually control their plane for a couple minutes each flight. The rest of the time is spent monitoring the autopilot system. However, without the autopilot, many pilots feel unconfident in their flying ability. They rely so much on the system that when it crashes, the plane typically ends up crashing too.

The author, David Learmount, writes an essay arguing for the probable cause of the AirAsia flight QZ8501’s crash. He believes that the crash occurred because of the pilot’s self confidence, not because of the plane itself. To support this argument, he uses 3 similar plane crash stories. He also uses a study that was done about pilots to explain how pilots rely on their autopilot system.

The first story was of an Air Algerie flight that went missing after a change in course. The second story was of an Air France flight that’s black box revealed that the pilots were given control from the autopilot, but they lost control of the plane without having an autopilot to help them. The third story was of a West Caribbean Airways that went out of control after the pilots flew the plane too low. However, there was nothing wrong with the plane, if the pilots had had practice without their computers, they would have been able to lift the plane more and saved their passengers. In every story, with more training, the pilot could have saved the flight.

By comparing these stories to the story of the AirAsia flight, one can see that the similarities point to a common cause. The evidence strongly suggests that the pilot’s training is at fault, instead of the plane or the weather. With this evidence, one can see that more training is necessary in having safe flights.