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Amanda Chamblee

Dr. Erin Dietel-McLaughlin

First Year Composition 13100

12 September 2010

Technology: Great Idea or Terrible Vice?

Technology is a very controversial issue across America. There are two completely

opposite extremes with many possible variations in the middle. These two extremes will be

thoroughly examined and discussed throughout the paper. One is either for technological

advance because it makes life easier and gets things done more efficiently, or against it because

people are so dependent on it and it is making them lazy. The trouble is weighing the pros and

cons and actually figuring out which is better; a world up to date with technology or one that is

dependent on people applying themselves and doing hard work to maintain what computers can

easily do once programmed.

In the article “Someone To Watch Over Me” written by Theodora Stites and published by

The New York Times, the reader is submerged into an electronic world where communication

takes place solely through technology. In this world, Stites says that one is protected by

technology because it filters out all embarrassment and unwanted interpretation. It makes face-

to-face encounters seem so overrated compared to pokes, winks, and other things which can be

sent between persons to communicate interest and interaction. Networking sites become a way of

meeting new people and showing the world the only side that one wants to be seen as. According

to Stites, photographs show off one’s beauty while at the same time giving him or her a sense of

artistic individuality. Profiles allow the reader to become familiar with the person they are

interacting with as well as walls, which allow one to see the interaction between other people.
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Stites thinks that this is simply the new and advanced way of communicating with others in this

generation. She also thinks that the old way of doing things, the face-to-face interaction, is

worthless and more difficult to get across what one wants to promote.

In the article “This Is How We Live” written by Ellen DeGeneres and published by Reffix

in the book Technological Somnambulism compiled by Langdon Winner, a quite different

approach is taken to the world of technology. DeGeneres thinks that technology as a whole is

hurting the world; and she is referring to more than just computers and electronics. She goes

through several examples in an effort to show that the main effect of technology is laziness.

People cannot even roll down their windows because it takes too much work, and therefore, a

button had to be made to do the work for us. She thinks that advancements are being made in

areas that had nothing wrong with them before such as portable yogurt. She claims that Go-Gurt

is a useless invention because there was nothing wrong with the portability of yogurt to begin

with. She gives off the impression that our world has become obsessed with advancement and is

willing to change anything in order to make it better or more efficient, even if it was completely

fine to begin with.

These two articles have differing views on technology. Stites’ side is convinced that

technology is the way to go when dealing with everyday activities such as communicating with

one another. DeGeneres’ side says that it has a bad influence on the common teenager,

employee, student, etc. When working with a controversial issue, it is important that the

presenter is completely connected to his or her audience. In an effort to appeal to their audiences,

both of the authors use rhetoric in order to get their opinions across. Although Stites uses an

interesting appeal to pathos by taking the reader through a day of her life and showing him or her
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the importance of technology, DeGeneres’ appeal to pathos as well as logos is much stronger in

getting the audience emotionally involved as well as taking them step by step through her logic.

When assessing articles through rhetorical analysis, three main criteria come to the

surface: pathos, logos, and ethos. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion and, therefore, is concerned

with capturing the audience’s attention, appealing to their emotions, gaining their trust, then

logically showing them the side one is promoting through reasoning and examples to prove an

argument. If this is to be done and done effectively, then one must appeal to one of three if not

all three of the criteria. Therefore, “Someone To Watch Over Me” and “This Is How We Live”

will both be analyzed using the above criteria.

In order for an audience to be engaged in whatever the presenter is trying to convey, it is

important that their attention is captured and held on to; and one way to do this is through pathos.

Pathos is a way of connecting to people through emotions as well as storytelling. Stites uses it in

the form of storytelling by taking her reader with her through a day of her life: “I consistently

trade actual human contact for the more reliable emotional high of smiles on MySpace, winks on

Match.com and pokes on Facebook” (Stites). This way, she can show the reader how important

technology is on a day-to-day basis rather than just telling him or her. This forms a connection

between the reader and Stites and that can become very powerful because Stites can use this new

found trust to persuade her readers. By pulling readers into her own life experiences, she can

control how they feel about technology by showing them select instances in her life to which it

applies most. On the other hand, DeGeneres uses emotion to capture her audience. Because she

is a comedian, she can use her humor in order to engage people by giving them examples such as

“If you want to know the truth, I blame the microwave for most of our problems. Anything that

gets food that hot without fire is from the devil. If you don’t believe me, put a Hot Pocket in your
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microwave for three or four minutes, then pop that thing in your mouth. If that’s not Hell, my

friend, I don’t know what is.” (DeGeneres 588). This is a very funny argument that captures

attention as well as proving a point; that technology is evil. The audience will laugh at this

example because it is a common instance which most of the people in the audience have

experienced themselves and therefore realize the point she is making. By coming up with

common examples that most people have experienced, DeGeneres can easily form a bond of

trust with her audience. Her celebrity status also helps her case because people are more inclined

to trust celebrities because of their widely accepted credibility.

Once the audience is engaged in the speaker, the next thing would be to logically lay out

the argument for the audience to make sense of and either agree or disagree with it. In order to do

this, one must appeal to logos. Logos is made up of logic, facts, reasoning, and evidence. Stites

uses it when she talks about how technology is better than face-to-face interaction. When one is

“online, everyone has bulletproof social armor” which protects them from awkwardness,

embarrassment, and unwanted encounters (Stites). These statements are common disadvantages

of face-to-face interaction that the reader can easily identify with, and can be seen as evidence to

support her claim that interaction on the internet is better and less damaging then that in a social

setting. To make her point even more clear, she goes further by saying, “Besides, eye contact

isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and facial expressions can be so hard to control” (Stites). These

statements seem to come from personal experience and therefore can be used as more evidence.

When DeGeneres uses logos, however, she tends to use logic more so than just evidence. This

makes her argument more persuasive because she walks the audience through her opinion step

by step until they reach her point. She also reverses it by laying out a typical scenario and

showing how it is completely illogical in a certain context. For example, she brings up cell
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phones that one can talk on without using any hands, which may seem like a good idea, but then

she puts the reader in the scenario of a car. It does not become apparent that this is an illogical

situation until she says, “chances are, if you need both of your hands to do something, your brain

should be in on it too” (DeGeneres 592). Then the reader is aware of how bad an idea the

technology was to begin with because it influences precarious behavior.

The third component of rhetorical appeal is ethos. This can be used to form trust between

the audience and the person trying to promote the idea. It is useful because in a way it guarantees

that the audience will pick the side of the presenter if it is done properly; and after all that hard

work, who would not want the audience to be on his or her side? Stites uses ethos when she

describes all of her daily activities and how in tune she is with technology. This gives her a

superior position and the reader is more likely to believe what she has to say about technology

because it seems like she is very knowledgeable about the subject. DeGeneres uses ethos within

her comedy act. Comedians usually get their material from personal experience and through her

examples such as the Hot Pocket example or the one about moving sidewalks in airports gives

the reader a sense that she knows what she it talking about because she has witnessed it first

hand. The reader also gets a sense of her intelligence and education through her use of logic.

Also, her being a celebrity gives the audience a sense of trust right off the bat and DeGeneres

easily uses that to her advantage. The audience expects her to meet certain qualifications and by

giving them what they want, she is setting them up to trust her and believe her further down the

line as well.

With every controversial issue, there are always two sides of the story. One major

weakness with Stites’ article is that it is so narrow-minded. It shows only one viewpoint

throughout the whole article and that is a world obsessed with technology. She only mentions
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once how life was or could be without technology, and this is where her paper falls short. If she

could show more examples of how life would be lacking without technological advancements,

then she could probably make a stronger argument. One weakness with DeGeneres’ article is the

riskiness of the comedic approach. One thing that needs to be realized is that when comedy is

used as emotional appeal, it is more for entertainment rather than trying to promote change.

People can get emotionally engaged in the presentation by laughing, but that does not necessarily

make them want to go out and change their lives around. It may, in fact, overshadow the

seriousness of the argument; which would be very detrimental to the person trying to make their

point. What saves her argument, however, is the fact that she uses logic along with the comedy in

order to stir up a moral dilemma in the audience. Without the logic though, it is just another

comedy performance.

In conclusion, the articles “Someone To Watch Over Me” written by Theodora Stites,

and “This Is How We Live” written by Ellen DeGeneres, do a fine job of persuading the

audience with rhetorical techniques; however, DeGeneres’ article is stronger in all three

rhetorical categories. She is the more trustworthy source because of her status in America, her

arguments are captivatingly funny as well as logical, and she does a great job of using personal

experience and pulling several examples from her life that are easy to connect with. Therefore, it

is my pleasure to recommend “This Is How We Live” to be added to the collection of rhetorical

pieces for the next edition of They Say I Say.

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Works Cited

Stites, Theodora. "Someone To Watch Over Me." The New York Times. The New York Times,

9 July 2006. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Winner, Langdon. “Technological Somnambulism.” Reffix: Reading and Composing

Culture. Ed. Caterine G. Latterell. Boston and New York: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2006.

588-592. Print.