Kasad 1

Dallas Kasad
Professor Fisher
ENG123
13 September 2015
Week 2 Reflection Journal
Include the Smart Thinking feedback for your annotation(s) and reflect briefly on how it helped
you improve your annotation.
The Smart Thinking tutors have already proved themselves to be a powerful asset early
on in this course as they were in that last. Thanks to my tutors help I was able to get another
perspective of my writing that allowed me to adapt how it was written. My family is moderately
savvy when it comes to technology, and after they read through it, the bibliography makes
perfect sense. It is nice to hear someone that is not so technically savvy to understand where the
everyday readers mind is going throughout reading my sources. I was able to clarify a few things
and put things into simpler terms as opposed to the jargon I have grown accustomed to.
Provide an example of how one article helped you find other relevant information about your
topic (e.g. key names, events, articles, organizations, etc.).
While I was reading through Li Xiangs article about Hacktivism and the First
Amendment, I learned quite a bit that will aid my paper. Hacktivism was a topic I knew of,
but knew nothing about, I simply put the pieces together; activism for hacker. I did not think that
the topic would relate, but upon further reading on her article it is more of a core concept to my

Kasad 2

paper than I originally thought. When a group comes together to defend our rights through the
First Amendment, it shows a major problem that needs addressing.
Describe what kind of note taking strategy for reading has been helpful for you. Do you take
notes directly on the readings? Do you (also) take handwritten notes on paper? Do you use any
programs such as Evernote or other technologies to help take notes?
My note taking strategies in the past are very scattered and tend to be more related to the
chaos theory than anything. That being said, any note I directly take about what I am reading
tend to be on computer documents. I use Microsoft Word most of all because it is very easy to
manipulate where ideas and sentences are on the page. One method I find particularly helpful,
though not easy for most is utilizing two monitors. I tend to run a lecture on my second screen,
and if it is an audio lecture I will have another web browser open for reference (looking up
definitions, short reading into concepts etc.), while my main screen has the word processor with
my page of notes I am currently working with.
How is it going in terms of narrowing down your research topic? Try describing your topic in a
paragraph and compare it to what you wrote last week. Has anything changed?
I have been narrowing my topic down substantially, moving now into the realm of the
effects of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and its ability to give an individual prison time for
simply violating the Terms of Service of nearly any website on the internet. I am still trying to
work out a few ideas in my mind, as I would like to pepper in the ideas that the internet is the
new frontier and with this new frontier the ability to enforce rights as well as laws needs to be
exercised as they are not too different.

Kasad 3

Reflect on how researching your topic is affecting your faith. Are there other biblical passages
that are helping you approach your topic from a Christian perspective?
Until this point I have never really thought about the Christian perspective. The
realization of that is proving to me that there is an absence it seems like on the topic. Not that
God is not there, but that the people involved tend to be Atheist, Nihilists or Agnostics. The
popular culture I am seeing surround the digital world the more I look back onto it and see a
digital war in motion and one without any chaplains. The only glimmer of light I see is some of
the major Hacktivist groups, fighting for human rights and equality. Even with this glimmer I
recognize that while all that is good comes from God, he is not displayed as the originator.
I see however a major opportunity here. Where the digital world connects the physical
world from end to end, there is a stronger possibility of The Great Commission. Matthew
28:19 Jesus says, Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. . . With technology today and the ability to talk to
someone on the other side of the world in your own language, as if you were sitting across the
table from them, we are lazy to not reach out to them if we know how.
Have you thought about what kind of multimodal project you will create? Do you have any good
examples to use as models?
The primary mode of my project is to educate the masses that the differences of online
and offline are becoming one and the same. The laws that allow certain events to take place in
reality, such as various means of protest, should be considered the same as what happens in the
digital world, such as DDoS attacks, re-routing internet traffic, and spamming information.

Kasad 4

While both sides of the spectrum exist, they are not punished equally as they should be. I have a
few examples to use including a case of a mother arrested for internet bullying, the work that the
group Anonymous has performed in an effort to uphold human rights, and another mother who
has gotten her two sons in trouble at school based on something she says on Facebook, entirely
not related to the school.
Are you noticing how rhetoric works in other aspects of your life? Can you describe any
interesting rhetorical situations you have been in the last week or two?
Rhetoric is quite fascinating the more I recognize it. Watching the various things that
Donald Trump has been saying on TV concerning the upcoming Presidential election and the
problems in America, I realize more and more how rhetoric fuels politics. While he is not a
politician, he is amongst politicians with his hard-nosed businessman sense. It is really his lack
of rhetoric that is giving him the acknowledgement he has currently. According to the masses, he
simply tells it like it is.
Another example was seen through reading the various articles. Reflecting back on the
article by Alexander Galicki entitled Computer Crimes, he addresses the Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act in a very humble manner. He speaks about it as America is in uncharted waters and
this is a first attempt at regulating how it works and recognizes that it is riddled with flaws. On
the opposite side, there is Molly Sauters article basically approaching the CFAA with a fight
the power message that government is becoming overly tyrannical. In both cases, they are
speaking about the same topic, yet based on terminology and examples given are saying
completely different things.