The Dark Side of Interactive Technology.

Posted: March 28th, 2022

The final assignment—your “term paper”—for English 101 is a research paper. That means a paper that investigates a topic, using sources that you look up in order to create an organized, informed discussion, and to justify your conclusion. The research element will be an important part of the paper.

The topic is: The Dark Side of Interactive Technology. I would like you to take some aspect of our modern, plugged-in, online life and examine its potential for causing serious problems.

Some aspects of this issue were already dealt with in essays we read by Andrew Sullivan and Sherry Turkle. There are other aspects as well: Does a childhood looking at cellphones and the Internet lead to shorter attention spans? Are interactions mediated by the Internet less rich and rewarding than those that take place in person? Are the enormous digital monopolies such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon—or, for that matter, the U.S. government—gathering data on individuals to an extent that threatens our freedoms? Are other countries undermining our nation’s security (or is our nation undermining others’)? Have we become so reliant upon the Internet that a cyberattack could cripple the entire nation?

There are lots of possibilities. I will post a few links, which may open up other possible avenues of investigation.

The final paper should be 1500 words long, not counting the Work Cited page. (This is down from 2000, which is normal for a college class, so I don’t consider this to be unreasonable.) It should follow MLA guidelines, with in-text citations, proper formatting, and so on.

Most important: You should use at least five sources, and at least three of them should be peer-reviewed sources. here are two of the sources that he give us.