Fake News

The 2016 election was one of the most controversial elections in probably the United States history. It was a full year of negative political ads and several articles that were made up about both candidates, which made it difficult for some people to tell what was real or fake news. Samantha Subramanian focuses on Veles, an 18-year-old boy from the Balkan nation that made thousands of dollars through creating fake news. This story within itself is pretty interesting, but since most people in the United States saw several of these fake news articles everyday shared through Facebook or tweeted it was able to resonate with the audience. That is what was able to give this piece a human element because it was about something we all know about and it gave insight to Veles life. That is similar to the documentary that we watched in class, when they were able to talk to internet trolls. I would say this is a more effective piece then that one because it gave us more information on the guy, so that we could see why he decided start writing these articles. As most people expected it was for money, but it was a little bit more then that. He lived in an underdeveloped neighborhood with limited opportunities and when he got the chance to get some of the material things that he otherwise would not be able to afford he took it. This appeals to the audience’s emotions or pathos, so that they can feel a little bit of sympathy for him. Overall that made this an entertaining piece that I thoroughly enjoyed, along with I am sure the majority of the class simply due to how relatable it was. Most people watch shows or read books because they can relate to a character or the story. In this case, it was a story that we were and are all too familiar with. Even though the election is over just like the article said there are still thousands or maybe even millions of fake news stories that we could find on the internet.

iGod analysis

In an age where almost everyone around the world has some sort of technology in their household whether it is a phone or laptop, most people seem to question how far it will be able to advance. Nicholas Carr tries to answer this in iGod by taking about different companies such as Google and Microsoft plans for the future, which is to create artificial intelligence. A term that a variety of people are scared of or tentative about, but is interesting to learn about. In the past couple of years there have been several advance in technology and yet artificial intelligence is still hard to imagen having. Carr shows us in this article that we are not as far off to making it happen as many people think. That makes this topic relevant and engaging to the audience because he is able to use companies that the reader knows and most likely uses every day and talks about their future goals. Later on he even reveals dates that people have predicted computers and people will be more connected. That definitely appeals to younger audience, who is eager to see what is going to happen next with technology.  Although overall it was a pretty good article I still think that he could add some information about the effects that this advancement in technology might have on society or on people to make it more relevant. He mentions that Bill Gates is not too keen on the idea of making artificial intelligence, but he does not really go into depth about why. It would have been interesting to look more at that side because later on in the article he talks about the benefits of it. Along with going more in to depth about what they are currently doing to create artificial instead of talking so much about the past. It felt kind of repetitive to me at the beginning when he talked about several different interviews where Google talked about how their goal is to make artificial intelligence.

Black Hole analysis

Michael Finkel does an amazing job in “Black Holes” mainly due to his point of view or his take on black holes. He centers his information on what the famous theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, thought about black holes. Finkel states in the article that although Einstein knew that black holes where a possibility he could not imagine the world producing such a thing.  This sort of grabs the reader’s attention because it was one of the few things that Einstein was wrong about. Now several years later tons of scientific facts have proven that they do in fact exist. A majority of scientists never wanted to claim this because of Einstein’s opinion. That perspective is what helps engage the audience to keep reading it ,while still being able to be factual and portray all of the facts by using Huxley’s 3 directions. At the beginning, he used Einstein as a historical reference that everyone would be able to understand. Then he goes more personal into what it would feel like as an outside observer to experience getting to slip into this black hole. This was one of the most interesting parts because you could picture yourself getting pulled into the black hole and getting ripped apart, yet it was all very factual. I was still able to learn all of the elements that goes into producing and getting into one of them. From this article, I took away not only a ton of information about black holes, but different techniques I could use on my next essay. The most important tip was probably to get the audience involved somehow whether it be putting them into the shoes of someone experiencing whatever I am writing about or by giving them real world examples. Either way I would probably need to do it in a fun and factual way like when he said that some physicists called getting ripped apart in a black hole call it getting “spaghettified”. I also really liked how he kind of did subheadings by bolding important phrases of a paragraph, this made it a lot easier to keep track of the article.