Assignment 11: Rhetorical Analysis and Explaining Choices

1.To what is the composer drawing the audience attention? What might the composer be able to overlook by focusing the audience attention in this way?

I think that Stein is drawing the audience attention towards technology and how it is slowly becoming more human like. This makes it hard to determine whether or not consumers are thinking and acting independently. The composer might be overlooking the impression of consumers as creating the catalysts for making the revolution of technology a reality. Stein makes an allusion to George Orwell's "1984" in order for her audience to see how the production of new technology and the introduction of the MacIntosh is a method  which strongly persuades consumers of the ideals which drives advertising. "The incantations of the voice emanating from the screen recall the Newspeak of the novel, a form of ideological brainwashing that ruthlessly curtailed the words permitted expression in the totalitarian society of 1984" (Stein 292).I think that Stein is illustrating to her readers that Apple will save consumers of IBM and revolutionize the extension os personal computing to the home. I feel that Stein makes the comparison of Apple to that of an authoritarian state in her analysis because it shows readers that the media functions to constrain individuality in which I feel afflicted.

2. What role does the author take toward the audience? Is the composer acting as a lecturer, a parent, a peer, a friend? Is this role appropriate for the purpose?

I think that Stein is acting in the role of a teacher in order to share how advertisements in the media are constructed in such way that changes or gives the audiences a certain perspective or is strongly influenced to have a specific belief about what ever is being shown to the public. I think that this role is appropriate because it allows readers to understand how the media functions to influence everyday decisions that we make. Playing the role of the teacher gives insite to the audience and allows them more opportunity to think as an individual not apart of the controlled masses. In this case, Stein's purpose in writing about the MacIntosh ad is explaining how Apple promises freedom and revolution through new technology in personal computing and how the production of new technology prolongs this cycle of indoctrination. Stein references Benjamin's theory om reenchantment in order for her readers to see how Apple calls on the ideals of freedom and revolution in order to maintain consumer interests in new technology."In 1984, the emergence of a new form of computer that was to revolutionize the consumer market called on new ways of representing reenchantment" (Stein 296). I never really took much thought into the intentions that the media presents to me as a consumer of society. I am bothered that it's almost as if I am being abused and taken advantage of because all of these companies purposefully makes defective products because they know that eventually I will have to buy something in replace of it. Stein uses Benjamin's theory of re-enchantment in an ever evolving technological society which convinced me that we are naive and easily influenced by the way in which things are presented to us.
o 3.What claims, reasons, and warrants are explicit or implied in the text? 
 In the 1984 MacIntosh Ad, the claim that Stein makes is that technology is not what controls he people, but it is the discourses and false impressions for which technology is advertised that calls  on consumer ideals and places them in a state of allure. A writerly choice that Stein makes is the distinction between the ideal of revolution and freedom that is presented to consumers and their ability to think as independents that are spellbound by these ideals. A question that Stein poses says, "Is advertising a reflection of society?" (291). To answer that,"The tensions and ambivalence so often present in dreams of technological salvation and enchantment are strongly evident here: the dehumanized and brainwashed legions of workers, their bodies as broken as their minds are shackled, alienated from their surroundings and each other, mesmerized by the lure and cadence of new technology" (Stein 292). I feel almost as if I am restrained and feel like I am a prisoner to my ideals. I feel like that is what guides making everyday decisions in life. An example would be that if I go to college I will have a better living and make more money. I think that this is an ideal that many are socialized into. In all honesty, this is only part of the reason but more so I am in college so that I can have a career that I actually enjoy doing and have fun with. I feel that Stein identifies humans as agents becoming more mechanized by the formation of new technology because we have to socialize to the ever changing ways of the world or we would not survive.

I think that all of these paragraphs will work together in showing how the emergence of new technology and the ideals that it presents are based on consumer expectations which propels their minds and ability to act individually but at the same time while being prisoners in their own minds. The argument that Stein makes is that Apple is not controlling consumer choices, it is the consumer ideals and expectations that controls the decisions they make, and in this case, it's about technology. Consumers are always developing new expectations for better and more efficient technology in replacement of the old and what they consider to be non-beneficial to one's own life anymore. Society is always developing newer technology and as this development continues, so also does the idea that the answer to problems is new technology. I feel that Stein     defines how the MacIntosh is a mirror image of consumer expectations in which we become prisoners to our own minds.