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For your second essay, you will produce an analysis of one specific technological object, and the object that you choose should be something for which you have affection. Your task is to analyze your relationship to your object using any of Unit 2 materials. For this essay, you could make visible (and therefore readable-> heard) the silent history of your object. As part of your analysis, you might explore the ways in which this silent history impacts your relationship to the object: Does the history complicate your affection for this object? (How) does its history cause you to reevaluate your relationship to it? Other students, might analyze how technological their object is and discuss why or why not it matters in the context of their lives? And ultimately, so what?

To prepare the first draft of this analytical essay (4-5 pages, double-spaced). You will extend the physical descriptions prepared in Prompts 5 and 6 to explain the possible significance this object has in terms of a larger concern–personal, social, aesthetic, economic, moral, ethical, and so on–or any combination of these. Focus on how your understanding of the object’s significance comes through your interactions with and experience of the object. Lastly, connect your analysis to one or more of the unit readings (Crouse).

3 resources from Almost Human: How R2D2 became the most beloved robot in the galaxy (Smithsonian, 2014)
The silence of the lambswool cardigans (Alternet)
Sherry Turkle, A passion for objects: How science is fueled by an attachment to things (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2011)