When reading Ian Bogost’s article, “The problem with diversity in computing”, I noticed that he used a lot of examples and rhetorical moves in order to get his point across. Bogost begins his article with a story that is easy to understand, which is how he introduces his topic. Bogost jumps right in instead of explaining his topic; the first sentence in the article is “When Amy Webb broke her ankle, she was forced to hobble around on a walking boot”. This sentence does not make it seem like Bogost is going to be talking about diversity in technology, which allows the reader to remain interested in the article, and makes them want to keep reading.
The second rhetorical move that I noticed was the use of logos, which is a way of persuasion using logic. Bogost uses logos throughout most of the article by stating facts. For example, while talking about diversity and access to education, he states that at Google, “more than 95 percent of technical workers are white or Asian”. Facts often convince readers to agree with what an author is saying.
A third rhetorical move that I saw in Bogost’s article was personification by using the words, “Computers have started issuing prison sentences” when talking about technology not being able to predict diversity. Obviously, computers cannot literally issue prison sentences, but this use of personification allows the reader to see the importance of this topic.
Furthermore, Bogost uses repetition in order to emphasize the point that technology tends to leave diversity out when talking about Webb at the airport. Bogost quotes Webb, then further explains her point when he says, “someone like me wasn’t in the room” when the system was designed, or when it was trained on images of human forms, or when it was tested before rollout”. Repetition of the word “when”, followed by an example is powerful here because it shows just how much diversity can be ignored.
Finally, I found that Bogost tends to use certain words that draw the reader’s attention. For example, he talks about how tech-industry diversity is improving a little bit, but he uses negative words in order to make a few sentences stand out. Bogost says, “Tech-industry diversity is improving, but it’s still pretty terrible. Women, black, and Latinx representation is particularly poor”. The words “terrible” and “poor” used while talking about the same point help the reader to understand how bad the situation really is, because these words draw attention.
I hadn’t read this quite this way and I thank you for that possible perspective. It might help me understand better how this is an argument. To me, it comes across as, yes, stating very interesting facts, but I would not say those are convincing anyone. They were generating interest in me, but I didn’t get the feeling I was being persuaded on Bogost’s behalf, or if agreed or disagreed with the facts presented.