Group Questions for 4/12/16

The four types of body rhetoric include embodied argumentation, street theater, rhetorical style and the vibe as bodily emanation. In each case the body plays a rhetorical role in promoting or contesting political agendas. Furthermore,  we then get the 5 Steps of Style.

5 steps of Style

1)   Observation

a.     Must first observe your style and the style of others before even beginning.

2)   Reflection

a.     See out the pros and cons of each style given

3)   Experimentation

a.     Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. You must go out and experience different styles before coming down to one.

4)   Application

a.     Comfort in your own style allows you to apply it in a broader sense.

5)   Chance

a.     You miss 100% of the opportunities you don’t take.

These 5 Steps are very beneficial because they give us a solid step-by-step process for finding one’s own style. I feel as though they can be applied to other aspects in your life such as the goals you make for yourself in life. If you view these steps with an open mind, the realization that they are much more than just steps of style will soon come to mind.

English Discussion Questions 4/7/16

My definition of language pertains to each culture on this planet having their own distinct “language” that creates uniqueness between each other. Furthermore, the 5 guidelines to language and communication consist of accessibility, clarity, respectfulness, provocativeness, and to also provide interest. These all have a clear motive of engagement towards the audience. Each one of these guidelines respectfully backs up the other in various ways that then ultimately lead back to the beneficiary of the people. The quote that you gave us relates back to the way a systematic government uses their language to either make or break a country. The fact that “War is Peace” generates a single enemy that then creates a distinction where people are willing to agree with this statement. So too goes with “Freedom is Slavery” since it is basically stating that all individuals who choose to act alone are prone to failure. “Slavery is Freedom” generates an understanding that because we were given freedom, we ultimately gave way to the theoretical feature of slavery. Lastly, “Ignorance is Strength” ties all of them together because it inevitably tells us that once people cease to recognize the contradictions, they then lose control to the hierarchy above them. The language nowadays on social media makes us think a certain way due to the way people tend to phrase their arguments. A perfect example consists of Donald Trump. The way he phrases his speeches begins exactly with language. The way he has used his language has increasingly gotten the attention of many fellow Americans. Americans have lost their self-control to realize right from wrong to the extent that they are under this man’s extremist’s views, yet the language he used first, got them on his side. Therefore, we can also point out the fact that today’s world is largely swayed by the propaganda factors that come with the media. They should be blamed for much of the “bad” trends that we tend to view on social media. I feel as though propaganda will continue to live on with us forever. It has stuck with us for such a long time that it’s completely inevitable to eradicate.

Chapter 1 Reading Questions

The way our generation has progressed determines how technology has built this social norm where we are constantly around it no matter what the circumstance. Almost everything in this world revolves around our technological innovations. As I sit and ponder upon this question on my computer, I realize how tech driven we are. Most of what we do needs technology. Waking up in the morning with an alarm, watching TV, warming up our food in the microwave, driving to work/listening to music in the car, doing work on a computer, etc. We get the point. However, I wouldn’t take it as a bad thing. It’s human evolution whether we like it or not. Why question the reason for not being like before where our world wasn’t centralized around technology. It’s better to move on and grow with this technological aspect. Instead of making it an awful societal norm, we should just move along with it rather than trying to repel away.

The media plays such a large role in regards to the way people receive their information for certain aspects. For an example, I will use the fraternity aspect of how the media portrays every single one of them. The media only highlights the bad parts about fraternities. They never show the good in fraternities and what they actually do for the community. This year, in my fraternity, we had our own philanthropy where we obtained thousands of canned foods and delivered them to the Good Shepherd Center in LA. Additionally, brothers go to Thousand Oaks each week to help individuals learn how to speak English. We also organized an event where we fed the homeless twice last week for a couple of hours. Other fraternities here on campus do their own set of volunteering also, so I’m not sure why people always choose to emphasize the “bad” stuff. Volunteering and doing good deeds for humanity is the stuff that goes unnoticed, yet say a fraternity throws a party, then that’s where the social media capitalizes on them. Not when they are doing good deeds for the community.

The 5 issues that we are faced with when it comes to activism are intercultural exchanges, intercultural communication, culture-specific rhetorics, translation issues, and Creating Translation rhetorics. It will always be a challenge to communicate cross culturally with other human beings, yet it’s the way we progress technologically speaking where we will overcome that burden and simply break down that blockade. It will be extremely beneficial when the communication aspect of cultures becomes efficient because that’s when the other problems will resolve themselves.

Blade Runner

Blade Runner Report

While watching Blade Runner, I immediately got enticed by the way that they projected the image of how the future would be perceived since they were in 1986 and were speaking in terms of how the year 2016 would look like. It almost felt as though they were predicting the future to be a dark and isolated world ruled by AI technology. To some extent, they were right regarding the way AI has overruled our life in some way, yet at the moment it’s social media and not robots in particular. I thought it was interesting when the question was asked if the owl was artificial, yet it was actually a live owl. Therefore, in their time, they believe that what’s actual real must exist through some sort of technological invention. In the film, the dedication of the plot is enticed around Blade Runners who happen to spot out the human like individuals called “Replicants.” The way Blade Runners perform this mysterious search relies on a small video camera detection device that allows the Blade Runner to figure out the distinction of human or robot through small movement in the eye when answering questions. It’d be crazy if one day AI became a part of us to an even greater extent than our phone, tablets, and laptops. I truly wonder if that’s ever possible. The idealism towards it says no since we will have be the form human, however, I am unsure of the way evolution will progress for humans in terms of technological resources.

Facebook and AI

It’s fairly obvious that AI and Facebook intelligence go hand in hand just by logging on and seeing ads on the side that are applicable to your life. I do find it a bit weird that they do this, but at the same time they are catering to your likings and making the social media aspect a bit smaller in order for you to feel comfortable. If they gave you platforms that included things you don’t exactly find interesting, then less time would be spent on their social media site. I feel as though I have noticed this trend of AI delivering specific ads geared towards my liking a while ago that it doesn’t’ effect the way I look at Facebook or other social media sites.  Besides Facebook using tracking devices to give you ads relative to your catering, other social media sites such as Instagram and Twitter both use the same sort of way of delivering us particular ads.  Twitter even has their own name of tracking customers on their site, Conversion Tracking. It gives advertisers data upon what the customer has viewed or purchased so that the customer gets more of that product thrown at their face. In particular, “Advertisers can track user conversion and tie them back to ad campaigns on Twitter. This gives them the visibility to optimize their campaigns to meet their cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goals.” All of this AI intelligence is revolved around making a large sum of profit for advertisers. That’s their main goal, the money. They will use whatever they can to engage the customer into buying more and more of their products, which is why they need AI to increase their views/sales. I don’t necessarily think that this involves the agency of post-humanism in some instance because of the fact that we’re having something else complete the job for us. It’d be different if we ourselves could perform this particular task that AI is much better at. In some circumstances I can see the argument of post-humanism, yet we haven’t reach that great of an extent upon post-humanism just yet. Therfore, I think that Facebook is definitely a social network of people, yet with the influential aspect of AI. In some ways I do question why Facebook keeps throwing me feeds from the same people each and every time and not a variety of my friends. It’s almost as if they’re making AI enclose your circle of “friends” to a certain group. Although I think Facebook has passed their prime of social media and the fact that the repetitiveness of individuals has made people abstain from it.  I completely agree with Elon Musk with regards to AI. It’s very dangerous if let loose, but in circumstances such as Facebook, I don’t think it makes that much of a dent on the population where people will start caring. In reference towards Vernor Vinge’s thought process of the inflection point, I do agree that one day we could potentially be physically extinct because robots will be able to do whatever human task, 100 times better and more efficient. In factories alone, they can do a human task much faster and with greater precision than any human could possibly attempt. It speaks volumes for where our generation is headed towards when talking about the progression of AI.

https://dev.twitter.com/ads/campaigns/conversion-tracking