In Cynthia L. Selfe's paper, Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution, she writes about how Americans, and specifically English educators, want computers to make the world a better place to live in. Selfe says, “We hope computers can help make us, and the students with whom we work, more productive in the classroom and other instructional settings more effective as communicators and more responsibly involved as literate citizens in the world affairs.” Pg.(293) What Selfe is saying is that she hopes that computers will help make Americans learn better and make then want to be more involved with things other then themselves. She then goes on to state from Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community, that, “computer networks can support more citizens in their efforts to communicate with government agencies, corporations, political groups, and information resources.” Pg.(293) Selfe is saying that when Americans learn more from computers, they will be able to be more in contact with government and other positions of control. Selfe then goes on to explain the first narrative, which is the global village and the electronic colony. Selfe says that technology will, “help us create a global village in which the people of the world are all connected.” Pg.(294) What Selfe is saying is that technology will make a program that will be able to bring everyone in the world together in a single place. Selfe believes that Americans are the leaders of technology. She states that, “Americans are the smart ones who use technological expertise to connect the worlds people, to supply them with the technology and train them to use it.” Pg.(295) What she is saying is that since Americans are the best with technology then they should be the people to lead this global village. Her second narrative is about the land of equal opportunity and the land of difference. In this part she talks about how advertisements make it look like America is open towards everybody. She says, “This landscape, Americans like to believe, is open to everybody-male and female, regardless of color, class, or connection.” Pg.(301) Selfe is saying that Americans think that America is the best place to live because it gives everybody an opportunity to live and try new things. She then says that, “America is the land of opportunity only for some people.” Pg.(304) What she means is that America has had its history of slavery and discrimination and immigration laws. We have had problems with women suffrage and poverty and education. Her third narrative is about the un-gendered utopia and the same old gendered stuff. In this part of her writing she talks about how women are portrayed and how men are put into positions of power. In figure 17 it shows a narcissistic, seductress woman staring into a computer for Samsung. Advertisements would never put a man in her position. In ads and commercials they portray women as seductress and secretary's while putting men in jobs as bosses and other powerful spots.
Claim 1: Quite simply put, like many Americans, we hope computers can help us make the world a better place to live.
Evidence: In Selfe's writing she says that “We hope computers can help make us, and the students with whom we work, more productive in the classroom and other instructional settings more effective as communicators and more responsibly involved as literate citizens in the world affairs.” Pg.(293) This supports her claim because if computers can make us more effective as communicators then we could talk about problems instead of fighting about them.
Claim 2: As much as Americans might like to think it; technology is not the only solution for all of the world’s problems-and, indeed, might well be a contributing cause to many of them.
Evidence: Technology isn't the only option for problems that the world has. Americans should be able to come up with other ways to solve conflicts.
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