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Christopher Ayala

Dr. Dietel-McLaughlin

FYC-13100-28

9 December 2010

Now Automatically Regulated for Your Convenience

Over the last few decades, the term “technology” has undergone several changes and

has metamorphosed into several different tools that can be used to enhance the average person’s

way of living. The big question at hand is not what technology is the best, but rather: Is man’s

increased usage of technology ameliorating society and our way of life as a whole, or is it

detrimental as a whole?

They Say/I Say, a publication that provides writing advice to both fledgling and expert

writers, is looking for an effective argument on this issue to put into the next edition of their

book, namely, one that reflects on the proliferation of technological devices and their

implications on us as a fully functional race of rational beings. Some contest that technology is

beneficial for mankind or, like the teacher interviewed on A Digital Nation, claim that

“technology is like oxygen,” that its presence is essential for us to make progress and succeed on

several different levels whether they be personal, social, or recreational. Others suggest that

technology has changed from something someone uses to a way of life, that technology is no

longer an object for our utilitarian tendencies, but is slowly taking over our lives in a gradual,

sometimes permanent change in the way we function as humans. Still others argue that the

proliferation of technologies such as social networking and other communication-related

innovations have helped humanity to connect to countless numbers of people from all over the

world. Two people, Ellen Degeneres and Theodora Stites, have opposing viewpoints on this
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issue of technology: one that views technology as a detriment to mankind and another that views

technology as a benefit for the human race.

Ellen Degeneres, an American stand-up comedian, television hostess, and actress, views

technology as a detriment to human beings. On the surface, she views technology as an

inconvenience that can’t be understood by the typical person. On a deeper level, the issue she

reflects on is more of mankind’s struggle for control. Having seen technology develop over time,

she wonders which side in the struggle for power is winning: the human or the machine. In her

article “This is How we Live,” Degeneres notes the effects of technology in our everyday lives:

how we no longer sit down to eat yogurt with a spoon but instead grab a plastic, manufactured

tube of portable Go-Gurt, how we live in constant fear of talking on the phone because of

potentially losing signal and dropping a call, and how we can no longer decide when we are

ready to flush the toilet when doing our business. She feels that technology is monitoring us,

performing routine maintenance checks on us rather than the other way around. She feels as if

we are living in a robotic society that separates us from one another; one that sacrifices

interactions with other human beings in exchange for technological progress.

On the other side of the spectrum, in her piece “Someone to Watch Over Me (On a

Google Map), Theodora Stites, a market researcher and writer, sees social networking as an

instrument that extends our social behavior as humans and ultimately brings us closer together.

She suggests that the digital world is a place that caters to the socially awkward, to the people

that need to sketch out every conversation before they actually have it and to the masses that

abhor real-world social interactions. Just like the real world, this virtual world has social codes

with various cues, rules, and practices that one must abide by in order to succeed. This world

also provides a medium to connect to people with different levels of social intimacy, to classify
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friends by the relative strength or weakness of a relationship, and to protect people from

emotional transgressions with their own piece of “bulletproof social armor” (Stites).

Both Degeneres and Stites present equally valid arguments with pieces of evidence from

their own experiential knowledge, personal anecdotes that arouse feelings of sympathy within

the reader, and different tones of voice in order to steer the reader to understand and see their

side of the argument. However, Degeneres’ clearly stated stance on the issue, her witty,

humorous, lighthearted presentation of personal anecdotes that shed light on the true nature of

the world in which we live, and her detailing of the technological innovations that separate us

from one another equip her with a greater connection to the audience, making her argument more

effective than that of Stites.

Degeneres’ clearly stated stance on the issue of technology and her continued

development of the point throughout her article helps her gain credibility from her audience

through her appeal to a pool of shared, commonplace experiences. Degeneres opens her article

by saying “I think modern technology is hurting us” (Degeneres 588). She clearly states her side

in the argument: that as a whole, technology is a detriment to society that has caused us to make

backwards progress. Rather than having a society full of busy, active people like the

romanticized people of New York City, “modern life requires hardly any physical activity”

(Degeneres). Instead of a culture that breeds an attitude of working hard to get from the bottom

rung of the social ladder to the top or from the financial lower class to financial upper class, “we

just push a button and stand there” (Degeneres 588). Degeneres suggests that America has

backtracked. The American populace has been molded from a population with a hard-working,

can-do attitude to a people that cultivate an attitude of laziness and passivity. Both she and her

audience laugh at the fact that society has become so lazy that “we have breath strips that just
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dissolve on our tongue” and “yogurt for people on the go” instead of doing tasks the old

fashioned way and consuming just a little more time (Degeneres 588).

Our backwards progress, demonstrated by our time hoarding tendencies, can also be

illustrated through Degeneres’ humorous anecdotes that reveal what she thinks is the true nature

of the world in which we live: a world that is governed and regulated by machines rather than

humans. When Degeneres relates a story about how difficult it is to use cheap, mass-produced

toilet paper, she said that “the toilet paper in public bathrooms…[is] an innuendo”. She suggests

that this product of human-run industries is personified and has the ability to insult her, to jeer at

her as if they were equals or superiors. She suggests that this inanimate object has the ability to

make our lives an inconvenience not only by slowing down our ability to use the bathroom, but

also by making us resort to feral tactics as we “claw at [the toilet paper] like [wild animals]”

(Degeneres 590) while we frantically try to satisfy one of our most basic human needs. The

constant creation and refinement of automatically regulated inventions for our convenience also

make our world seem more controlled by the iron grip of the mechanical world. Degeneres

wonders why people aren’t creating useful technologies to propel us forward, and are instead

creating things that continue to make things easier “that don’t need to be made easier”

(Degeneres 590), like the faucet and the flushing of a toilet. These things “can decide” when and

where to perform their functions, preventing us from having “any control” (Degeneres 590) over

the basic tasks we had control of over a decade ago. Rather than brooding over the semi-grim

reality that faces society, Degeneres turns these facts into stories of humor by adding extreme

reactions such as “how dare you! I’ll decide when I’m done [doing my business]” and real-life

situations like touching the “disease-ridden door handle [of the bathroom]… and head to the

bowl of mixed nuts you’re sharing at the bar”. These humor-laden stories allow Degeneres to tap
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into the audience’s sense of emotion to earn her a greater sense of pathos, and thus, bolster the

effectiveness of her argument by establishing a stronger relationship with them.

Degeneres also uses humor to detail the way people in society are slowly becoming

more disconnected. She begins her point by citing the typical constant repetition that is

characteristic of phone conversations: “What about the bangs? Are they shorter? Are the bangs

shorter? THE BANGS!!” On the surface, she makes fun of an all too familiar reality: our

inability to communicate effectively due to the unreliable service our subscriptions provide. We

need to repeat ourselves to be heard, rather than making the decisive point the first time around.

She details a common scenario that each person in her audience has been in, which earns her a

sense of credibility from shared experiences that strengthens her sense of ethos. On a deeper

level, however, Degeneres touches on the paranoia people have when they talk on the phone, the

paranoia that is so strong that “you’re scared to talk too long ever again”. People are scared of

being disconnected while simultaneously always wanting to stay connected through new

technologies such as the cell phone, the “wireless technology that lets us talk to anybody,

anywhere, anytime” (Degeneres 592). We have the potential to form friendships across the seas,

to stay in contact with people we left behind during childhood, but we are simply too terrified. In

addition, the cell phone disconnects us from each other through the new “hands-free”

functionality (Degeneres 592). Although it enables us to perform multiple tasks such as talking

on the phone while writing a short story, as Ellen rightly says, “Chances are, if you need both of

your hands to do something, your brain should be in on it too”. The multitasking involved takes

our concentration from the thing that matters most in this situation: the person one is talking to.

We slowly drift away from people, our loved ones, because of the unalterable presence of

technology in our world.

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It could be argued, however, that technology brings people closer together. In her

article, Stites presents a scenario that portrays an image that society is familiar with: the social

networker. Stites appeals to the audience by presenting her social networking life in an over-the-

top manner. She says, “My life goes like this: Every morning, before I brush my teeth, I sign in

to my Instant Messenger to let everyone know I’m awake. I check for new e-mail, messages or

views, bulletins, invitations, friend requests, comments on my blog or mentions of me or my

blog on my friends’ blogs.” Stites places her social networking above routine physical

maintenance, like brushing her teeth or eating. She suggests that her networking habits take

precedence over all else – that creating new connection online is the most important thing in life.

The weakness of her argument, however, lies in the very same over the top manner she

employs on the audience. Her delivery is sarcastic and ambiguous, making it difficult for the

reader to distinguish the true message behind her article. Stites says, “I prefer, in short, a world

cloaked in virtual intimacy. It may be electronic, but it is intimacy nevertheless. Besides, eye

contact isn’t all it's cracked up to be and facial expressions can be so hard to control”. With this

statement, she could be satirizing the younger generation that spends countless hours interacting

with one another through various mediums, including text messaging, instant messaging, and

sites such as Facebook. However, she could also be stating what her actual views are: the views

of a socially awkward humanoid. As a result, she convinces the audience that the younger

generation is losing the ability to socialize in person and to use facially controlled emotion

because of the lack of social cues in their communication media, thus becoming more separated

from the community. It can also be inferred that this is a plea from the socially awkward, crying

out for human contact without actually making physical contact. In addition, readers might feel

like Stites actually pushes people away when she says she thinks “of most people by their screen
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names”. She strips them of their identity in the human world; the name one calls another by to

establish a connection of friendship. These multiple conclusions, stemming from the ambiguous

tone Stites employs, makes it much more difficult for one to pinpoint a central topic or argument

in her article. Does she desire for “bulletproof social armor” or does she just want the ability to

avoid “awkward social situations I couldn’t log out of” (Stites)? Technology, as she describes it,

seems more of a tool to be utilized to keep track of people, to classify people, and to keep

distance from them rather than a medium to bring people closer together.

The argumentative weakness that plagues Stites’ stance can also be applied to

Degeneres’ argument, namely, the tone of delivery that Degeneres chooses to employ. By the

very nature of her occupation, people are less inclined to believe her argumentative spiel as

something well thought out and intelligent because of the generally low ethos that plagues

comedians. It would not come as a surprise if most of her audience were comprised of people

who justcame in for a good laugh rather than a life changing monologue. In addition, the

structure of her act leaves little room for counterargument, decreasing her logos credibility. She

spends the vast majority of the time criticizing “technological breakthroughs” and not

backtracking to cite the undeniable convenience that some of these pieces of technology have,

like the cell phone’s ability to call somebody wherever and whenever. In spite of these factors,

however, her argument is still more effective than that of Stites because she clearly states and

makes her argument, rather than Stites, who sidesteps a clearly stated point and instead leaves

the reader with ambiguous text to analyze with little assistance.

In conclusion, it would behoove the authors of They Say/I Say to include the article

from Ellen Degeneres in the next edition of their textbook because of the radically different

presentation she employs. Rather than presenting her argument in more of a neutral, civilized
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fashion, she frames her argument in the form of a comic speech. Certainly, she doesn’t use

techniques that build up her argument’s sense of logos and doesn’t use statistics to illustrate her

point, but her sense of ethos and pathos that stem from her connection to the audience through

shared experiences and her appeal to emotion through humor counterbalance the shortcomings of

her argument, making it more effective than that of Stites.

Works Cited

Degeneres, Ellen. “This is How We Live.” Remix: Reading and Composing Culture. Ed.

Catherine G. Latterell. St. Martin’s: Bedford, 2006. 588-92. Print.

Stites, Theodora. “Someone to Watch Over Me (On a Google Map).” Nytimes.com. The

New York Times. 9 July 2006. Web. 26 Sept 2010.