Annotated Bibliography

Johnson, Steven. “The Myth of the Ant Queen.” The New Humanities Reader. Eds. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. 192-209. Print. 

Johnson talks about emergent intelligence in complex systems. He uses ants and humans as living examples of the process, but then he builds into the more theoretical framework in mathematics and in computer science.

Davidson, Cathy. “Project Classroom Makeover.” The New Humanities Reader. Eds. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. 47-71. Print. 

Davidson in her article is using the ‘iPod experiment’, whereby Duke University gave away iPods to their entire freshman class and any student whose class would require it, to explain how educators are looking at education from the wrong perspective. She uses anecdotes to show how the American education system is failing and how to fix it.

Fredrickson, Barbara. “Selections from Love 2.0.” The New Humanities Reader. Eds. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. 109-127. Print. 

Love 2.0 is about the chemicals in the brain and how to rethink the human mind from a biochemical perspective. It deals with how people feel when interacting with others and how the brain experiences chemical changes and how those changes describe people’s behavior.

Heller-Roazen, Daniel. Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language. New York: Zone, 2005. Print.

Roazen talks about how people can forget things quite easily. Humans forget the baby babble that they once knew as an infant. Also he focuses on how children can learn languages so easily and that people forget the ease of learning language as they grow up as well.

Porges, Stephen W., Jane A. Doussard-Roosevelt, and Ajit K. Maiti. "Vagal Tone and the Physiological Regulation of Emotion." Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 1994: 167. JSTOR Journals. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

This last article is a research paper on the regulation of emotions in physical terms. The paper starts off by describing what emotional behaviors people have and then it moves on to the physical features that are responsible for dictating emotion, including the neuroendocrine, autonomic nervous, and central nervous systems. The last part deals with the development in emotional behaviors and how the relationships between the systems regulate emotion.

Paragraph Revision

Original:

The simple fact for global systems is that they tend to organize in ways that benefit the most possible market players involved. Lethem understands how systems as vast as the global marketplace can seemingly arrange into organized structures, writing  “Organized complexity, on the other hand, is like [a] motorized billiards table, where the balls follow specific rules and through their various interactions create a distinct macrobehavior, arranging themselves in a specific shape, or forming a specific pattern over time.” The global oil industry, with its numerous large players and trade organizations can be thought of as a system which follows the rules of organized complexity. The oil industry, despite its various players often having competing interests, often come to pacts and come together to control the market for oil. I was recently reading an article in Bloomberg pertaining to the ability of oil producers to open new drilling rigs despite prices being at all-time lows. The answer to this conundrum was simply standardization. Companies such as Statoil, instead of investing in new drilling technologies, simply built new drilling rigs as they had built previous ones- saving billions for the company. Standardization of parts is also something that has allowed new drilling rigs to come up cheaply. Other companies, “crowdsourcing” for answers look towards a “pacemaker” such as Statoil for answers. Following the Statoil model, companies such as BP and ExxonMobile have expanded their drilling efforts. This adoption of ideas which at first do not seem particularly revolutionary or far reaching has the far reaching effect of continuing to supply the market with cheap oil, keeping prices low for consumers globally. The various oil companies, by exchanging ideas as simple as standardization reached an organization whereby the interests of one are in line with the interests of all.

Revised:

The simple fact is that global systems tend to organize in ways that benefit the maximum number of market participants. Lethem understands how systems as vast as the global marketplace can seemingly arrange into organized structures, writing  “Organized complexity, on the other hand, is like [a] motorized billiards table, where the balls follow specific rules and through their various interactions create a distinct macrobehavior, arranging themselves in a specific shape, or forming a specific pattern over time.” The global oil industry, with its numerous large players and trade organizations can be thought of as a system which follows the rules of organized complexity. The oil industry, despite its various players often having competing interests, come together- either to establish deals or control the oil markets. The collusion of large oil companies, either to drive out weaker competitors or to set prices at first makes little sense. Why don't see other oil companies as competitors that need to be weakened? Common sense shows how such a mentality comes with numerous shortfalls. Thus macrobehavior emerges in which companies, rather than compete in a zero-sum game collude for the collective good. I read an article pertaining to the ability of oil producers to open new drilling rigs despite prices being at all-time lows. This ability was not the result of some new technological advancement, but rather the standardization of existing technologies. this conundrum was simply standardization. Companies such as Statoil, instead of investing in new drilling technologies, simply built new drilling rigs as they had built previous ones- saving billions for the company. Standardization of parts is also something that has allowed new drilling rigs to come up cheaply. Following the Statoil model, companies such as BP and ExxonMobile have expanded their drilling efforts. Had Statoil somehow found a way to patent their standardization procedures it could have greatly limited the building of new oil rigs of other companies. Such a "usemonopoly" would invariably hamper growth, and the markets can be thanful that such a situation never arose. This adoption of ideas which at first do not seem particularly revolutionary or far reaching has the far reaching effect of supplying the market with cheap oil, keeping prices low for consumers globally. The various oil companies, by exchanging ideas as simple as standardization developed a system, largely unintentionally, where the interests of one are in line with the interests of all.

Analysis: 

The original paragraph is quite wordy and uses several examples. Salman's criticism made me focus on the logical issues with some of my sentences. When I wrote about how companies come together to control prices and such, he noted that smaller companies are not welcome in this sort of collusion and are generally squeezed from the market. In order to address this I noted how this system only included the large oil companies. I also went to to explain why companies would choose not to compete, hoping that I would make the point clearer to the reader. Tom mentioned how the sentence "Other companies, “crowdsourcing” for answers look towards a “pacemaker” such as Statoil for answers." was confusing, so I omitted it. I also tried to tie in copyright into this example as Salman mentioned vaguely in his critique, inserting the term "usemonopoly" in one of the sentences to tie the ideas back to Lethem's work.

Paragraph Revision

Original

The case could be made that these two prominent forms of collective intelligence are categorizable as one definition, or that the term deserves no special attention, but such a statement shows blindness to a great array of differences. Each author tends to lean toward one form of the word, not addressing the fact that it has multiple meanings. Collective intelligence is a vast term, that can extend beyond even the two aforementioned forms. In defense of the controversial iPod experiment, Davidson states, “A revolution in the democratization of knowledge is not frivolous, especially considering that, once customized, an individual mobile device is actually an inexpensive computer” (Davidson 54). She is supporting the idea for a new kind of intelligence. In her case, this relates more directly to the idea of crowdsourcing, but it carries with it a broader application. Her statement that it is not frivolous shows the need for attention to be paid to the concept of collective intelligence, and to pay attention to it, one must recognize the duality associated with it. Johnson addresses much duality in his piece, as well. For example, he does this in regards to complexity. He writes, “There is, first, the more conventional sense of complexity as sensory overload… But complexity is not solely a matter of sensory overload. There is also the sense of complexity as a self-organizing system” (Johnson 199). Making note of this difference is essential to Johnson’s essay. Beyond this point he chooses to focus on solely the latter definition of complexity. Had he chosen to not differentiate between the two definitions, his paper would be hard to follow and ineffective. As a result, the same can be said for the two definitions of collective intelligence. It is crucial to recognize that each meaning is distinct and different.

Revised

The argument could be made that these two definitions of collective intelligence are categorizable as one definition, or that the term deserves no special attention, but such a statement shows blindness to a great array of differences. It is true that each author tends to lean toward one form of collective intelligence, not addressing the fact that it has multiple meanings. However, the aforementioned explanations should have demonstrated the falsehood of such a statement. Davidson makes the case for attention to be paid to collective intelligence. In defense of the controversial iPod experiment, she states, “A revolution in the democratization of knowledge is not frivolous, especially considering that, once customized, an individual mobile device is actually an inexpensive computer” (Davidson 54). Through the example of mobile devices, Davidson’s statement is supporting the concept of a new kind of intelligence. In her case, this relates more directly to the idea of crowdsourcing, but it carries with it a broader application, which can relate to the topic as a whole. Her statement that it is not frivolous shows the need for attention to be paid to the concept of collective intelligence, and to pay attention to it, one must recognize the duality associated with it. Johnson addresses this kind of duality in his piece. For example, in regards to complexity, he writes, “There is, first, the more conventional sense of complexity as sensory overload… But complexity is not solely a matter of sensory overload. There is also the sense of complexity as a self-organizing system” (Johnson 199). Making note of this difference is essential to Johnson’s essay, considering that following this statement, he chooses to focus on solely the latter definition of complexity. Had he chosen to not differentiate between the two definitions, his paper would be hard to follow and ineffective. As a result, the same can be said for the two definitions of collective intelligence. Each meaning is incredibly distinct, so without differentiation, their uses can become unclear.

Analysis

My reviewers had suggested that my quotes in this paragraph seemed a little bit out of place. Rather than completely replace the quotes, I tried to do a better job of blending them into the paragraph to make the paragraph flow more smoothly. Because my thesis deals with a rather technical aspect of the definition, having a strong counterargument in my essay serves to strengthen the relevance of my thesis. With these edits, I have made my counterargument stronger, and thus strengthened my own argument.

Despite natural inclination of humanity to follow the same path when guided by a leader, Davidson argues that allowing large groups of people to tackle problems independently, a collection of individual solutions will come through, many of which could not be foreseen. Her example is the ‘iPod experiment’ held at Duke where students had to produce a valid reason for the technology to be used in their class so they could have access to a free iPod. Those students helped create a new media, the podcast, where lectures can be shared online. This lead to the development of iTunes U. She is saying that the individual efforts of the students are what lead to the shift in technology and education. However, where is the individuality in the group collaboration. The individual efforts of the developers in Manchester lead to the famous modern city, with shopping districts and housing areas. Just because the efforts seem isolated do not mean that the product is as well. The combined ideas and efforts of the students is where the crowdsourcing model shines.

Despite natural inclination of humanity to follow the same path when guided by a leader, Davidson argues that allowing large groups of people to tackle problems independently, a collection of individual solutions will come through, many of which could not be foreseen. Her example is the ‘iPod experiment’ held at Duke, where students had to produce a valid reason for the technology to be used in their class so they could have access to a free iPod. Those students helped create a new media, the podcast, where lectures can be shared online. She is saying that the individual efforts of the students are what lead to the shift in technology and education. However, there is the collectiveness in the group collaboration, “the iPod could be used for collective learning,” (Davidson 52). The individual learning process was not the focus of the experiment for her. Even Davidson wanted to see how technology effected the collective system of college students. She knew that like the individual efforts of the developers in Manchester lead to the famous modern city, with shopping districts and housing areas. Just because the efforts seem isolated do not mean that the product is as well. The combined ideas and efforts of the students is where the crowdsourcing model shines. It is one thing for individuals to come up with ideas; it is another for the group as a whole to accept and use them. If a students had not continued to use the ideas presented on how to use the iPod, then the experiment was a failure. Yet Davidson insisted that experiment succeeded, so that means ideas were accepted into the main thinking of the group.

Max said that I needed to have a quote and relate my idea back to the thesis better. So I refocused the paragraph. I found a quote which enforced the belief I could not express earlier without evidence. Davidson does believe that the individuality of her students is what defines the crowdsourcing, but even she must admit that this experiment is more about than the individual ideas. It is one thing for individuals to come up with ideas; it is another for the group as a whole to accept and use them. I do want to expand more on the idea, and incorporate some more ideas from Johnson, but it will take more than one paragraph to express them all through this line of thinking. This paragraph relates back to my thesis by explaining how Davidson’s argument can benefit my own. My revision reinforces that goal better.

Davidson Reading

Evidently, Cathy Davidson in “Project Classroom Makeover” wants to reform America’s current education system. She thinks “the formal education most of us experienced” that “prepared us for success in the twentieth century” won’t work anymore in the twenty-first century (Davidson 55), yet her examples don’t offer a clear, cohesive solution. Her iPod experiment suggests that we need to modernize education in order to meet the demands of the current world, yet her anecdote with Miss Schmidt hints that only minor changes are needed on the antiquated teaching style and the note on Mrs. Davidson shows another radical way of teaching, but doesn’t take advantage of modern technologies. Although the three anecdotes share some similarities with one another on improving education, they are all examples of very different solutions and it’s unclear what kind of action is Davidson calling for.

Taking into context that Davidson is a scholar who is “one of the most impassioned advocates of the electronic media” (47), it becomes very clear that the agenda she cares about most is her iPod experiment. However, this begs to wonder how the other two anecdotes support the iPod experiment instead of acting as alternatives. Yet the very fact that the other two anecdotes are alternatives actually supports a fundamental finding in Davidson’s research: crowdfunding. She writes:

“In the world of technology, crowdsourcing means inviting a group to collaborate on a solution to a problem…. First, the fundamental principle of all crowdsourcing is that difference and diversity - not expertise and uniformity - solves problems. Second, if you predict the result in any way, if you try to force a solution, you limit the participation and therefore the likelihood of success. And third, the community most served by the solution should be chiefly involved in the process of finding it” (51).

The way Davidson structures her argument in the article follows the very principles of crowdsourcing. First, her article allows her to reach out to a broad audience of “difference and diversity” to raise awareness to solve the problem with modern education. Second, Davidson doesn’t directly ask the reader for help and “force a solution”; instead, she provokes thinking through the ambiguity of her call to action and intentionally admits shortcomings in her findings. And third, Davidson’s article reaches out to students and educators alike, involving them in the process of creating the solution. In a sense, the way Davidson chooses and words her examples allows her to play the game in the long run to ultimately crowdsource the solution to education.

Johnson Reading Assignment

Much of Johnson’s “The Myth of the Ant Queen” focuses on complexity, but it is his use the word itself that helps to bring unity to an essay which seems to go in many directions. After beginning to tell the story of the history of Manchester, Johnson introduces the word complexity by explaining its meanings. He first provides what he considers “the more conventional sense of complexity as sensory overload… leading the way for a complementary series of aesthetic values.” (198) In the same way that this definition of complexity is what people will think of first, it is what the city of Manchester will appear as initially. Manchester looks like a rather chaotic city which inevitably comes with some aesthetic values. Johnson goes on to state, “There is also the sense of complexity as a self-organizing system—more Santa Fe Institute than Frankfurt School.” (199) He makes the case that this form of complexity is what Manchester really is. The Santa Fe institute is dedicated to the study of complex adaptive systems while the Frankfurt School is a school of social theory and philosophy. In other words, complexity can describe a complicated system rather than something more basic. 

Johnson goes on to explain the history of the complexity theory, in a section of his essay that seems radically out of place until he relates in back to complexity. He provides a lengthy, difficult to follow story about Alan Turing and Claude Shannon. In it, he explains their work with patterns and how it led Shannon to write a book entitled The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Johnson writes, “In many respects, it deserves to be thought of as the founding text of complexity theory—the point at which the study of complex systems began to think of itself as a unified field.” (203) Being that much of the studying that went into this book was based on patterns, this claim provides a slightly alternative definition of complexity as a product of many patterns. This makes complexity sound much more organized, as opposed to disorganized, reiterating the second definition from above. Additionally, it helps to bring Johnson’s entire essay full circle. Early in the text, Johnson tells the story of how ants live. He explains how an ant farm is actually a very strategic and intelligent system. After Johnson explains so much regarding the word complexity, a unity can be drawn between his story of the city of Manchester and the way that ants live. Both civilizations operate under a complexity that appears overwhelming and chaotic but is actually rather systematic and full of patterns. 

Despite the obvious differences in subject matter, Cathy Davidson’s Project Classroom Makeover follows a structure much like Johnson does. Similarly to how Johnson speaks of complexity, Davidson discusses the term crowdsourcing in her work. In this, she takes a term that the audience may be familiar with and introduces it as if it was something brand new. In Davidson’s case, she discusses the education system rather than civilizations, but both authors make the argument that things are not what they first appear to be through the use of their respective key terms. Johnson makes the case that some civilizations are products of organized complexity despite appearing to be very disorganized. Davidson claims that the education system may benefit from a crowdsourcing model as opposed to the hierarchical model. While neither author states that one should be primary to the other, both argue that both forms need to be considered. As a result, these two works dealing with very unrelated topics go about their points in a very similar manner. 

"Ant Queen Reading"

      Throughout the essay The Myth if the Ant Queen, Steven Johnson uses many metaphors to describe and create analogies between different self-organizing systems. The first example is that of an ant colony, where there is no single ant or group of ants controls which ant does which job or where trash and the dead are moved to. Instead, the ants decide as a whole through many individual choices that are all apparently unconnected with each other how to best go about their jobs through the usage of pheromones to communicate. His next example is that of the evolution of England`s Manchester, a city roughly 150 miles northwest of London (195, Johnson) and how the city changed as it grew, lower, middle, and upper class members all lived in their own sections of the city, without needing to see the other sections very often, if at all. In this way, different sections of the city emerged from the chaos, as if on their own. Interestingly enough, the definition and use of the word 'emergent' changes through the duration of the essay.

     In a scientific field, the word emergent means how unrelated properties or abilities become into being from the use and specific organization of an organism`s or system`s parts. For example, the parts of a bicycle all keep their properties (i.e. the wheels are round, frame triangular-ish, two handle bars, etc.) when separate or joined together, however, when joined together in a specific way, the result is a machine that will propel a rider forward by turning the pedals, which none of the parts by themselves are capable of doing. Initially used to describe the colonies of Harvester ants his college works with (where the ants would be parts of a system, collectively making a colony (the system) as a whole) fits in with the traditional definition and usage of the word 'emergent' from a scientific point of view (194, Johnson). However, by the middle of the essay, Johnson begins using the word in a different way, to describe how Manchester city created its own districts, keeping the classes within the city separate (198, Johnson). As Johnson writes, "The city [Manchester] has built a cordon sanitaire to separate the industrialists from the squalor they have unleashed on the world, concealing the demoralization of Manchester`s working-class districts - and yet that... comes... without "conscious, explicit intention... That mix of order and anarchy is what we now call emergent behavior" (198, Johnson). In this quote, the author explains what a quote from Friedrich Engels is saying, and changes his definition and usage of the word 'emergent'. From this point on in the essay, emergent is taken to mean a semblance of order arising from the midst of chaos, as opposed to unforeseeable properties or abilities coming into being from the combination of a system`s parts. In this way, the author can now use emergent to describe a self-organizing system like Manchester, where no order was strived for, and yet was created, unlike an ant colony where order is necessary for life and part of the overall goal of each individual ant in the colony.

     By keeping the wording the same but changing the definition of the words slightly, Johnson helps the reader to connect different parts of the essay together, also allowing for a somewhat easier analysis of the essay as a whole, but still being able to break the work into parts to analyze individually. For example, there are many parallels between the self-organization of Manchester as a city and the Harvest ants as a colony, albeit with several stark differences, the chief one being that the ants all have one single goal to achieve together (the working of the colony), to which organization is very important, while in Manchester the only common goal between all the citizens is to survive individually. Additionally, all activities the ants take are to help the colony and protect and care for their queen, while the tasks taken by Manchester residents are much less connected and often uncoordinated or connected at all. Despite these stark differences between the two communities, by using similar wording to describe them, Johnson paints a picture in the reader`s mind that the two are as similar as a community of people and ants can be from his perspective, despite several differences between the two.

     Looking at "The Myth of the Ant Queen" and the essay "Project Classroom Makeover" by Cathy Davidson, there are several connections between the two texts when viewed from this angle. One I can think of is that all the apps created by the iPod given to students at Duke University and creative uses found for the iPods are all emergent properties of the system created between the students together with their professors and their iPods. In this way, the characteristics of the ant colonies having no leaders but still being a highly functional team and apps students invented during that experiment are parallels in that neither were foreseeable outcomes of their respective systems. However, neither essay tackles a similar problem. In Johnson`s, he studies how self-organizing communities mange to appear and organize themselves without leaders while drawing several parallels with different types of self-organizing systems, while in the iPod experiment, an R&D worker gives college students free electronic gadgets to see what they are able to do with them, not a self-organizing system at all as humans naturally try to be leaders or give the mantle of command to someone less, and none of the projects would have had everyone involved as true, 100% equals because of human nature. Both texts look at different problems with different perspectives (Johnson`s essay being about self-organizing systems and Davidson`s about an experiment with students, learning and technology) but still manage to share certain parallels with each other, interestingly enough.

Johnson Reading Assignment

   The word complexity repeatedly appears in Johnson's essay, "The Myth of the Ant Queen". At first Johnson describes complexity in two ways. He claims it to be a "sensory overload" or something "stretching the human nervous system to its very extremes" (Johnson 198). Or he says it can be a seen as a "self-organizing system". In other words "larger patterns can emerge out of uncoordinated local actions"(Johnson 199). So for something to be complex it must be overwhelming and at its core, be very simple. This seems rather contradictory. For something to be complex it must overwhelm us yet be understandable at the same time. Usually it is one way or the other. You either understand something or it is overwhelming. At first glance, I believed that for something to be complex, it had to have several intricate moving parts that worked together in an advanced way. Yet here Johnson claims that complexity does not come from more complexity but from simple movements. Johnson first demonstrates this with an ant colony. An ant colony is very similar to a city. Each worker ant goes about doing their own separate task from the other worker ants. As each ant does their own menial task, the tasks work together to form a large and powerful colony. Complete with a system of tunnels, dumps, food storage, and cemeteries. All the repeated simple actions that take place slowly build on one another to create something very complicated. This simple build up can also be seen in code breaking. Alan Turing broke the code of the German Enigma machine by finding a pattern within it. The underlying pattern he found was very simple. Therefore continuing the idea that complexity comes from simplicity.

   This idea is also apparent in Davidson's essay "Project Classroom Makeover". In her essay she talks about the idea of crowd-sourcing, which is a way of taking the collective answer of several people rather than relying on an expert's opinion. Crowd-sourcing in its essence is a very simple idea. Each person who answers the question posed, gives a brief answer that helps lead to the overall conclusion. The end result is often a complicated solution. So just like the complex systems seen in Johnson's essay, crowd-sourcing which appears complicated, comes from simple beginnings. 

Davidson Close Reading Exercise

Cathy Davidson’s article is divided into several main parts. In the beginning, she introduces the iPod experiment and how many people objected to the experiment. She then went to talk about how the hierarchal educational method narrows options, while crowdsourcing is a method that greatly opens up the possibilities at hand. She explained how this change was greatly opposed to, even though later on, it was immensely successful. Davidson states, “This iPod experiment was a start at finding a new learning paradigm of formal education for the digital era.” (Pg. 55) Two paragraphs later, she says,

“The formal education most of us experience – and which we not often think of when we a picture a classroom – is based on giving premium value to expertise, specialization, and hierarchy. It prepared us for success in the twentieth century, when those things mattered above all. Yet what form of education is required in the information age, when what matters has grown very different.” (pg. 55).

In other words, the world has changed, education needs to change with it. The subsequent part talks about how the current education model is primarily based upon Ichabod Crane’s model in the 1820s. Davidson writes,

“…Officers even called for ‘sweeping new school standards the could lead to students across the country using the same math and English textbooks and taking the same tests, replacing a patchwork of state and local systems in an attempt to raise student achievement nationwide.’ Ichabod Crane lives!” (pg. 56)

In the next part, Davidson gives the example of the girl with green and blue striped hair who, according to Davidson, is one person of many “who have skills outside that spectrum [the spectrum of the current educational model] will be labeled as failures.” (pg. 61) Later on, Davidson reiterates this point by showing that this girl did have a skill that the modern educational model failed to appreciate.

            She also talked about how she used to be one who had trouble with memorizing certain speeches in order for her to graduate. She was never able to memorize them, but she did something else that she was good at – and because her teacher was a bit more open minded, she was able to graduate. But what if that teacher was closed minded – like the current hierarchal educational system? This is the implicit question Davidson is conveying.

            The example of Inez Davidson, with her creative ways of teaching, only attempts to ask this question again. Inez Davidson changed education in Picher Creek from being formal and hierarchal to one that suites the students – and it wasn’t easy. Just like how introducing iPods to Duke was difficult. The author writes, “First, she [Inez Davidson] got in a lot of trouble, every year, with the school superintendent because she refused, ever, to teach to a test.” (pg. 65)

            Cathy Davidson is conveying one primary message: The modern education system is not working for many people. Inez Davidson taught differently, and she was successful. The iPod experiment taught differently, and it too was successful. The education in the United States needs to be also looked at differently in order for it to be successful as well.

Response to Davidson close readings

Thank you all for your insightful close readings of Davidson, both on the blog and in today’s discussion. I just wanted to write a brief point to re-emphasize some of the things we discussed in class. All of the posts, I believe, would benefit from more specific references to particular moments in the passage that illustrate their analyses. For instance, Max mentioned in class the way that the periodic structure (with lots of subordinate clauses) made Davidson sound defensive about her claims, as if she were delivering a persuasive speech. (And indeed, the essay’s main intent does seem to be persuasion). Alana insightfully notes that “attention” is a keyword running through the text, and suggests that there’s a juxtaposition between knowledge that’s predetermined and knowledge that’s crowdsourced. But as we discussed in class, that juxtaposition isn’t really apparent in the sentences on p. 51, which suggest a binary, but which don’t possess a parallel structure. Kansh and Matt both do a good job discussing the evident bias in Davidson’s essay, but as you begin composing your essays, I’d encourage you to take it a step further and think about what those biases occlude. Alvin takes a step in this direction in his focus on the anecdote about the exceptional teacher: does her (hierarchical, expert) guidance undermine Davidson’s point about crowdsourcing? Salman does a great job of reading against the grain, suggesting that the binary Davidson sets up between experts and crowdsourcing could actually be synthesized into a crowdsourced model that includes expert opinions.

Good work everyone. Keep these things in mind as you work on the Johnson reading and your first rough draft.