Background:  Our fourth essay assignment in Writing 1 is a “bridge assignment” to Writing 2.  That is, it is an argumentative essay using limited research.   The paper presents an argument in response to a topic discussed in Sherry Turkle’s book, Alone Together.  In addition to Turkle’s book, you will identify and use four helpful and applicable outside written texts that you discover through research.

 The final product will like be five to six pages long; beyond that, it will include a MLA-style Works Cited page.  (See the OWL MLA web page for guidelines.) The paper will use in-text citations for quotes and paraphrases from other sources.  Follow MLA format for in-text citations as well, as in the following example:

Romantic poetry is characterized by the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” expressed in poetic metaphors (Wordsworth 263).

Reading:  In order to better understand the subject matter and the strengths and weaknesses of Turkle’s arguments in Alone Together, we’ll do the following tasks during the reading cycle of the assignment:

·       Explore an article by Nicholas Carr, “The Great Forgetting,” from a recent edition of The Atlantic.  Carr argues that whereas a century ago, technology was being used to reduce the amount of human physical labor in performing tasks,  now we are handing off high-level thinking and skill-oriented tasks to technology.  He believes that these decisions are leading to a loss of expertise among white collar workers and professionals.  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-great-forgetting/309516/