The Death of Solitude

Solitude, which has played an important role in people’s lives throughout history, is quickly being erased by the changing world and advancing technology. People no longer value solitude, and some people fear it. This claim is argued by William Deresiewicz in his essay, “The End of Solitude.” In recent years technology has developed at rates never seen before. Deresiewicz wants to inform society about how this change in technology has brought about the end of solitude, which has had negative effects on younger generations. By his use of high-level vocabulary and references, the intended audience of the essay is the educated members of modern society. Deresiewicz uses the rhetorical appeal strategies of ethos, logos, and pathos in the essay to effectively and successfully argue his main claim.

With the rise of the internet, some people argue that privacy no longer exists. From the 2013 revelations of government surveillance of citizens’ communications to companies that monitor their employees’ internet usage, this argument seems to be increasingly true. Yet, Harvard Law professor Charles Fried states that privacy, “is necessarily related to ends and relations of the most fundamental sort: respect, love, friendship and trust” (Fried 477). However, Fried is not arguing that in a world where privacy, in its most simple terms, is becoming scarce that these foundations of human interactions are also disappearing. Instead, Fried expands on the traditional definition of privacy while contesting that privacy, although typically viewed

5 Ways You Give The Government Control” written by Kenneth Coats shows how the devices we use daily slowly take over individuals lives. Coats states, “Today, most people in the United States carry a mobile phone that accompanies them wherever they go. We use them for everything...This essentially makes them the perfect tracking and bugging devices”. Although electronic devices are known to be safe, they allow outside people to figure out individuals personal life. Due to the need for devices such as cell phones, each individual has a high chance of being socially stalked once in their lifetime. Coats then states, “Not only do intelligence agencies gather information via mobile companies, but… your phone can be hacked using spyware. Even if your phone is turned off, it can be remotely accessed to recorded conversations and take photographs”. This issue causes a panic due to the wide spread of inappropriate pictures and private conversations in one's life. Even though technology is viewed as a privileged, it is also taking away people's lives without their

Today, smartphones are everywhere. Just about everybody uses them from the time they get up, to the time they go to bed. With this personal tool, a lot of people have seen positive effects from using the device. However, some believe that people are going to far with a smartphone and that now it’s becoming more than a personal companion. This is what Nicholas Carr believes in “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds.” In the essay Carr argues that smartphones are having a negative effect on people’s minds. He strengthens his argument by use of fact, word choice, and emotional appeal.

We lost the ability to be still, our capacity for idleness. They have lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude. (The end of solitude, pg.4)

Yet again she is right on point. I feel that this merges into her chapter Absent without leave. People get so focused on this cell phone screen that they are like a zombie, not mentally just physically, they are lost in a cell phone screen. Rosen, (2001) Within the essay, Disconnected Urbanism, Paul Goldberger adds to this idea, he states “there in body but not it any other way? You are not on Madison Avenue if your holding a little object to your ear that pulls you toward a person in Omaha”. Goldeberger, (2003) I feel that this line pulled from his essay wraps up a message same as Christine Rosen. This issues have only gotten worse since technology is much more advanced from when these essays were written. People all over the world are simply living in a digital world and the young generation is losing valuable personal communication

Anton Chekhov, a Russian playwright, stated “The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps it is partly for that reason that civilized man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.” Although our founding fathers never used the word privacy in the constitution, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that privacy is a constitutional right. Privacy has consistently been expressed as a cultural value regardless of one’s ethnicity. Given all this, explain the impact of technology on privacy. (20 points)

In the essay, “Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’”, published on May 15, 2011, Professor Daniel J. Solove is trying his best to convince his well sophisticated audience that the issue of privacy affects more than just the everyday people veiling a wrong doing. His argument focuses around ethos, and a lot of it. Although there are some logos and pathos, they aren’t as nearly as strong as his ethos. In the type of society that we live in today, privacy has become more and more broad. Everyone sees it on an everyday occurrence just about; including on social networking sites, HIPAA forms, or even with people just simply observing

As a growing topic of discussion, privacy in our society has stirred quite some concern. With the increase of technology and social networking our standards for privacy have been altered and the boundary between privacy and government has been blurred. In the article, Visible Man: Ethics in a World Without Secrets, Peter Singer addresses the different aspects of privacy that are being affected through the use of technology. The role of privacy in a democratic society is a tricky endeavor, however, each individual has a right to privacy. In our society, surveillance undermines privacy and without privacy there can be no democracy.

This editorial is intended to open the eyes of older and middle-aged Americans who are involved in the technology community that we live, but don't understand the hidden repercussions that permeate through their phone, computer, and laptop use. Not many people understand how the government's abilities affect their daily lives, and some are even completely ignorant to their privacy actions. I intend to inform them about the dangers of releasing personal information into the open, as it is not only harmful for yourself, but to others around them.The audience will then learn that the government is always listening to our every text, call, email, search, and keystroke and adding every day people into a bank of information.

Throughout the readings “Bowling Alone”, “Alone Together”, and “Still Bowling Alone”, the three authors all have their points to get across involving technologies in our societies. They’re all quite common, as in they all seem to want us to be weary of how close we get to technology, as it’s drifting us away from our friends and family, but also from our civic and social lives, as “Bowling Alone” speaks heavily about. Technology can be a positive aspect of life, but when you look at it from these authors’ perspectives, you can possibly see it as a negative.

Today, individuals are sacrificing privacy in order to feel safe. These sacrifices have made a significant impact on the current meaning of privacy, but may have greater consequences in the future. According to Debbie Kasper in her journal, “The Evolution (Or Devolution) of Privacy,” privacy is a struggling dilemma in America. Kasper asks, “If it is gone, when did it disappear, and why?”(Kasper 69). Our past generation has experienced the baby boom, and the world today is witnessing a technological boom. Technology is growing at an exponential rate, thus making information easier to access and share than ever before. The rapid diminishing of privacy is leaving Americans desperate for change.

With the advent of mobile phones, iPad and other smart technology, accessing information across the web has become very easy. You can sit at home and pay your phone bills, or talk to someone from across the world. Along with these benefits, it has also become easier to get access to information that would otherwise be restricted. In recent years, debates have taken place regarding the concern of the privacy of information that is uploaded on the internet, or that is taken from it. This research paper aims at comparing the controversies that surround the concept of privacy in the digital age.

Magic realism is a writing style in which mythical elements are put into a realistic story but it does not break the narrative flow; rather it helps a reader get a deeper understanding of the reality. Often time’s Latin-American writers utilize this writing technique. It has been speculated by many critics that magic realism appears most often in the literature of countries with long histories of both mythological stories and social turmoil, such as those in Central and South America. Like many Latin-American writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez used this approach of magic realism, in his book “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, in which he reveals the history of Macondo through the seven generations of the

"No man is an island." This famous quotation explains the nature of man as a social being. It is truly a fact that human beings cannot exist in isolation. They need to be interdependent with each other in order to survive. This interdependence is needed because a human being alone will not be able to fill his own social needs, and his material necessities came from other people as well. All acts of society such as sex, love, and dependence are essential for the survival of any species. Interaction and socialization is the only way to prevent people from isolation, from solitude.