iWoz: Chapters 5-7

This section of the autobiography highlights three main, consecutive events in Steve Wozniak's life: building his first computer, meeting Steve Jobs, and his adventures with the "Blue Box". These pivotal moments of his life all happened while he was in college and his later business partner, Steve Jobs, was in high school (coincidentally the same high school as the one Wozniak went to). The author states that his first computer, the Cream Soda Computer, was the greatest milestone to date; his meeting Steve Jobs started a great friendship, and soon a successful professional career; and his "Blue Box", a machine which allows the user to override the telephone lines and make free long-distance calls, was the creation he is still most proud of today.

Steve Wozniak's continues his purpose of inspiring the reader to accomplish great feats in his or her life by telling anecdotal adventures regarding his love of computers. The reason this strategy is effective is because it shows the reader that he or she has to be interested in his or her field to be able to excel in the subject. Another way the author accomplishes his purpose is by focusing on his relationship and adventures with Steve Jobs. For example, he tells the reader his story of the unsuccessful poster flipping off the senior class at Wozniak's and Jobs's high school. Wozniak implies clearly that this was a bonding event between the two individuals because they learned much about each other that helped strengthen their friendship for many years to come.

iWoz: Chapters 2-4

This chapter of iWoz highlights Steve Wozniak's adventures throughout a good portion of his educational career, from the science projects in elementary school all the way up until his programming pranks in college. The autobiographer traces all his engineering projects, keeping up with his reoccurring theme of self-determination to become the most excelled and successful among his fellow students. Wozniak first describes his advanced intelligence while learning about transistors and other electronics in first grade, than winning awards for building outstanding devices, than finally developing these devices to play fun and sometimes costly pranks on others.

The author's purpose during these chapters is to inspire students to challenge themselves by guiding them through his journey to the top in order to help create a more intelligent and advanced world. The first way the author inspires the reader is by writing in subtle references to how poor his family was. For example, when considering where to go for college, Wozniak deeply wanted to go to the University of Boulder in Colorado. However, his dad did not want him to go there because of the high tuition rate. Therefore, they made a compromise in which he would go to Boulder for one year and then transfer to a community college. Later, the author explains how he strived to make the best of his time in Boulder. This shows the reader how one can always overcome their issues by believing in him or herself and making the best of what he or she has. Another way Wozniak inspires the reader is by making it clear when he made a mistake and how he should have learned from it. The two times this is expressed is through his TV jammer in his college dorm and his programs in the computer programming class that accidentally cost the department its budget many times over. 

NPR: When Rand Paul Ended Filibuster, He Left Drones On National Stage

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/10/173864536/when-rand-paul-ended-filibuster-he-left-drones-on-national-stage

This article discusses a topic that Senator Rand Paul touched upon during his 13-hour filibuster last week: the use of drones on U.S. citizens. The Senator claims that this hypothetical power to use drones on U.S. citizens is against the President's oath of office. Although the Senator also went into ethics of drones in general during his filibuster, this article explores it further, explaining that Democratic Senator Richard Durbin from Illinois will hold a hearing discussing legal authority on drone attacks overseas. However, this article mainly reacts to analysis from Paul's filibuster regarding domestic drone attacks, both positive and negative. For example, it highlights a conversation following the speech between Republican Senator Ted Cruz from Texas and Attorney General Eric Holder. Cruz illustrates a situation: "Suppose someone was sitting in a cafe, drinking a cup of coffee. Should the government be able to use a drone against that man?" To which Holder responds that the government cannot even arrest the man, let alone attack him.

This article and audio clip comes from National Public Radio, a large, credible news organization. It uses several rhetorical devices on its audience of adult readers in order to convey its purpose that our government needs to clear up its policy on overseas drone attacks. The most effective strategy is the article's use of cliffhanger at the end, leading the audience to become interested in this April hearing about drone ethics. Also, a subtopic the article mentions in the ineffectiveness of hypothetical situations such as the one Ted Cruz uses above.

Politizane: Wealth Inequality in America

http://www.complex.com/tech/2013/03/video-shows-shocking-imbalance-of-us-wealth-distribution

This video was an instant wake-up call to me on the issue of unequal wealth distribution in the country. It can be summarized in two sections: the first graph and the second graph. The first graph is simply a type of pie graph, only in a line instead of a circle. The second graph is a line plot, which turns out to be even more perplexing than the first.

The context of the video is the ongoing issue of unreasonably uneven wealth distribution in the United States, which the speaker addresses very clearly. His audience is directed more toward the liberal side, since he illustrates socialism as not such a bad idea. The speaker's purpose is to open Americans' eyes to the problem of uneven wealth in America using visual evidence and comparisons to our perception of the problem and to perhaps encourage Americans to spread the message. The number of ways the speaker is getting his point across is so many that it surprises me to no end. However, the most prominent and effective strategy in the video is undoubtedly his use of visuals mentioned earlier. For example, his second section of the video includes a line plot in which every percentile is represented as a person on the graph. Then there are stacks of money for each person respectively. Since I am a strong visual learner, I literally sat in my seat open-mouthed when the speaker said that the top one percent are at a representation ten times the size of the graph. That sort of mind-blowing proportion personally hit me hard. In addition to the real visuals, he compares them to the average American's distorted view on the situation. It is unbelievable how 5,000 Americans were no naive, and it makes his audience think of how each one of them would have answered the poll. The speaker is absolutely successful in conveying his message and consequently opening our eyes to the realistic issue of wealth inequality in the country through his use of visuals and comparisons to Americans' twisted perception of the problem.     

Time Magazine: "Stick and Stones:" Does Facebook and Twitter Give Bullying More Power?

http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/22/sticks-and-stones-does-facebook-and-twitter-give-bullying-more-power/print/

This article, written by Alexandra Sifferlin from Time Magazine, looks upon our social media world today through the lens of bullying. To begin, she highlights an argument in a book called "Sticks and Stones" claiming that the Internet has spun bullying out of control. She then continues to support this claim through a recent study at Duke University that mentions how being bullied as a child can be severe even in the future to a victim, possibly causing psychiatric issues. After analyzing some more evidence to bullying being problematic in the future and interviews with the author of "Sticks and Stones," the author leaves us with some advice on how we can protect our children against the emerging issue of cyberbullying.

Sifferlin is a graduate from Northwestern and is a current writer and producer for Time Magazine's Healthland. This article revolves around a prevalent issue in our country, emphasizing cyberbullying as a increasingly detrimental problem in society. Sifferlin's purpose is to argue that cyberbullying is not stressed enough in our culture. In order to get her claim across to her audience of adults with children, she both uses practical evidence from studies and ends with speaking directly to her audience. More importantly, Sifferlin slowly shifts from general, logical evidence to a more personal, one-on-one tone. She uses the mindset of the reader to her advantage: first, she convinces them that cyberbullying is a major problem toward young children; then she mom's perspective of bullying to connect with the audience; finally, she leaves the reader with parental advice on how to have your kids avoid this issue. This creates a very reinforced argument that is sure to have an effect on the author's audience.

iWoz: Chapters 1-3

    This book is an autobiography on Steve Wozniak, the multi-millionaire most known for being co-founder of Apple with Steve Jobs. The story has so far only described his early years and childhood, further detailed through stories about his family and lifestyle. For example, when he and his friends were eleven years old growing up in Silicon Valley, they formed a group called the Electronics Kids. Since most of the group members had fathers that were engineers or mechanics, they had background knowledge on how to build cables and microphones. Therefore, they decided to build a secret intercom system connecting six houses together in order to plan out when they would sneak out of their rooms at night. When the idea was finally brought to life, they bought toilet paper to throw at girls' houses.
   Wozniak states his purpose very plainly on the cover of the book: "How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it." Other than illustrating his purpose in the subtitle of the book, the straightforward wording also alludes to a rhetorical device that the author uses: simplicity. Both in terms of vocabulary and descriptive language, Wozniak's simplicity conveys to his audience of Apple users and future engineers that he is not hiding his message behind complex rhetoric or detail. In other words, the author is using a lack of rhetoric as a rhetorical strategy. With regard to accomplishing his purpose, Wozniak uses accounts from his life, such as the Electronics Kids mentioned earlier, to connect to his audience and establish ethos. Fortunately, the author does not have to work that hard to establish ethos, since anyone buying the book probably knows who Steve Wozniak is. 

Ambler Gazette: Whitpain inventor flips the horizontal game of chess to vertical

http://www.montgomerynews.com/articles/2013/02/10/ambler_gazette/news/doc51088d2e92133704120510.txt?viewmode=fullstory

This local article highlights a Blue Bell inventor named Steve Bailey. Based on Bailey's "stand-up" habits, he developed a new approach to the classic game of chess. Instead of using a board that sits horizontally on a table, he made a prototype that is built into the wall, stood up vertically, and magnetically attracted to the pieces. Bailey describes how it could be used in bars, possibly used similarly to a dartboard. He is currently using websites such as kickstarter.com and quirky.com to get his idea out to the public, finance his manufacturing endeavors, and further improve his idea. The invention is currently patent pending.
The source of this article was Montgomerynews.com, which is a local website dedicated to news in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. This particular article was published on this website from the Ambler Gazette. Gary Puleo, the author of the article, has written for the Times Herald and the Ambler Gazette for over 20 years. The audience of this article includes the regular Ambler Gazette readers, more specifically those who like to read pieces about unique ideas. The context is the emerging ways to start a business and get your ideas out to the public, and the purpose is to highlight and inform the readers about this phenomenon. A prominent stylistic trait in this article is the language the author uses to keep the article interesting. For example, if the reader was not very interested in chess to begin with, the author incorporated business, financial, military aspects to the story to keep it appealing to a widespread audience. It is hard to say without bias whether the author accomplished this, since I was hooked with the mention of chess in the first place. However, I believe the author did accomplish his main purpose by describing the up-and-coming new ways to conduct business through the Internet.