I think immediately at the start of the blog post, one of the first uses of rhetoric that helped me was in the first paragraph. When introducing Amy Webb, Peterson grabs the attention of the reader with a common issue that many have experienced, in this case it is getting injured and having a boot. This helped to place myself in the shoes of Amy Webb and understand where the foundation of the article is coming from. The next piece of rhetoric was something I found I could connect to was when Amy described how she noticed the other women walking through the scan at the airport and seeing that all of them had the breast area glowing yellow. This was an observation that allowed me to picture the incriminating evidence Amy found, being that all these women passing through airport security were found to have glowing areas of yellow in the breast region. I found it fascinating that it was small inconsistencies with the system’s scanning that marked whether an area should be considered searched or not. This was further understood when mentioned how “curly hair” may also show up as a yellow area of concern on a security scanner, although many people like myself have curly hair, allowing myself to understand that these small inconsistencies most likely affect a large population of people who do not have straight hair and even more with those who do have breasts. Later leading into the topic of the article, being that computer analysis systems should be more diverse, I found it quite interesting when Webb decides that an example to look up to is China as it draws the reader in as to why this is the case that there is a better way to educate. They way China is educating their future generation is a bit different than the USA, as these young children are being taught the “new basics of knowledge” pushing for studies of reading and writing over coding. I think it is also evident that when in the concluding paragraph, the reader is drawn in again by the claim that this underrepresentation of minorities and women is an issue, but “not a fundamental one”. This claim in interesting as it pushes not that the public is not represented, but that the real problem is “computing with computing”.
Writing and organizational cultures
Valerie – you’re so right. Of course we would think that solving the under-representation of women and minorities would be the focus of the article. It’s actually not, and as such, gives us a much broader perspective on what really needs to be tackled. I’ve read many articles about the future of work when “robots take all of our jobs”. Something that I’ve been encouraged by is the suggestion that what we should do as a society is to begin a renewed focus on jobs that will absolutely require a human touch, a human connection.
Right–part of the author’s aim here is to point to the systemic issues in play, not just this one symptom
I recognized similar strategies when analyzing the rhetoric used throughout the article. The use of a story that can connect to the audience seems like a common strategy to persuade people to accept a specific point. In the past we have seen that strategy used in readings on neurodiversity to TED talks about efficiency. I understand why people would use that approach to connect to the audience but it makes me think why do they specifically include it when first introducing their argument?
There’s a kind of narrative approach here–using storytelling as the ‘hook’ to pull a reader in, which is fairly common when writing for a broad and complex audience. As Valerie points out, these opening anecdotes are pretty relatable and likely to work for people from many different backgrounds.
I somewhat agree with Michaela above me. I agree with the question, but I would go farther to say that I don’t believe there’s an argument on Bogost’s behalf. Or if there is, I’m definitely missing it. He even ends with a question that doesn’t seem like a complete sentence after presenting his audience with such interesting information all the way through; unfortunately, I’m still left wondering, where does Bogost stand on this?