Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Prompt for Midyear Exam



Evaluating the Satirical Argument
in M.T. Anderson’s Feed
In his essay “On Feed” M.T. Anderson writes “People have told me that Feed is coming true. (Many of the technologies I discussed have been explored in recent years.) But in a sense, I believe it was already the reality when I was writing. I was already dreaming in advertisements.”
Write an essay in which you evaluate the extent to which Feed is an accurate and effective satire of the influence that consumerism and technology have on personal identity, interpersonal relationships, environmental health, and global politics in the 21st century. 

You must bring an annotated prompt and a note plan with supporting detail to the midyear exam on Thursday, January 22.

resources:
Feed by M.T. Anderson

Packet with readings on the effects of digital technology: 

     "My Kids Are Obsessed with Technology, and It's All My Fault" by Steve Almond 

     The Shallows by Nicholas Carr 
          Three excerpts:
          "The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brain" (from The Shallows) by Nicholas Carr
          "The Church of Google" (from The Shallows) by Nicholas Carr
          "Pundits have been trying to bury the book..." (from The Shallows) by Nicholas Carr

     Wall Street Journal adaptation from Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff
 
     Your Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier
          Seven excerpts:
          "Facebook Is Similar to No Child Left Behind"
          "The Abstract Person Obscures the Real Person"
          "Just a Reminder That I'm Not Anti-Net"
          "Empathy and Locality: The Blandness of Global Context"
          "Rendezvous with Rama"
          "A Physiological Basis for Metaphor"
          "Meaning Might Arise from an Artificially Limited Vocabulary"
 
"Consumption and Consumerism" by Anup Shah (last updated, 5Jan14)
(The above article is a page on a site called Global Issues, which has readings on other aspects of global politics.)

In-text citations: For parenthetical citations of the sources above, use the author's last name. (Note: It is often also helpful for your argument for you to introduce the source before citing it.) For the purposes of this assignment the above list will constitute the works cited page unless you use additional sources that you find on your own. (See below for information about citing additional sources.)

Note: If you use sources other than those discussed above, you must not only provide the in-text citation but also must provide a full MLA citation on a works cited page.

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