Juan Monroy — Assignment: Information Revolutions

Prompt

In Alphabet to Internet,, Irving Fang argues that communication media technologies that are both products and factors of deep social changes. While these communication technologies did not singularly create these revolutions, they were important factors in changing human society.

Read the first two chapters of Alphabet to Internet and compare two information revolutions in history due to the advent of writing and the rise of print.

Consider the following issues when writing your review:

What specific changes did writing and/or print bring to human life?
How did writing and/or print connect humans across great distances (space) and across different historical periods (time)?
How did writing and/or print influence political action?
Why did writing and/or print diminish respect for tradition and authority?
How did the use of writing and/or print affect or reflect our own values?

Guidelines

Your paper must be exactly 750 words in length.
Your paper must be typed and double-spaced.
Your paper must have page numbers.
Your paper must include your name on the first page.
Cite your sources and include a reference list, if appropriate, at the end of your document.
Upload your paper to Google Classroom by October 12, 2015 at 5:00 PM.

Rubric

An excellent essay should make a concise and coherent argument about the development of writing and/or print as factors in sparking information revolutions in history.

Opening

An opening paragraph summarizes your entire paper for your reader. It should orient your reader about your topic, spark the reader’s interest in the topic and your paper, reveal your findings, and explain how you arrived at those findings.

Include a concise introduction of your topic, no more than one or two sentences.
Include an interesting fact—one that is not common knowledge—to grab the reader’s attention.
Include a thesis statement, one that shows a cause and effect. The entire purpose of your paper is to prove a causal relationship. For example, “Because humans developed writing to record and transmit ideas, knowledge could be accumulated and shared across vast distances and time periods.”
Include a methodology. You can explain your method for showing your cause and effect and thus proving your thesis statement. First-person voice is acceptable and almost necessary.
Don’t use a dictionary definition. For example: “According to Websters, media are…”
Don’t make a faulty assumption about the timeless of your subject. For example: “Since the beginning of time, humans have communicated.”

Body

The body of your paper should explain the causal relationship (thesis statement) from the opening paragraph of your paper. This is the central argument of your paper. To convince your reader of this causal relationship, you might regard this as a step-by-step process.

Humans did *A* (e.g., develop writing)
This led to *B*
*B* led to *C*
*C* led to *D* (e.g., the transmission of knowledge)

Breaking down the causal relationship into a series of steps is the most challenging part of the assignment. It requires a mix of writing, thinking, and then writing what your figured out, and then some more thinking about you just wrote. And then you repeat the whole process again, which is why most writers are anti-social weirdos.

Feel free to sketch, list, outline, doodle, or whatever you do to visualize these steps. Then start writing.

Include a topic sentence for each paragraph. As elementary as this may sounds, it is still relevant for any writing. A topic sentence is a summary of the paragraph and should appear at the beginning of the paper.
Build paragraphs off each other. If the logic of each paragraph doesn’t flow in a rational order, rearrange so that they do. Copy-and-paste is your friend.
Include evidence to help your reader understand each part of your argument. Quote sparingly but do cite anything you quote or paraphrase in your paper that is not common knowledge.

Conclusion

A conclusion is your victory lap. After you have made your argument in the body of your paper, remind the reader about what you have just explained in about one paragraph. Don’t simply restate your thesis. Instead, perhaps, mention the importance of the effect in your thesis statement. For example, why is it important for humans to accumulate and share knowledge? I like to think of a conclusion as an introduction for a relevant paper that I would like to write next.