SWA #4

It seems at least at first glance that both David Friedman’s “Ideas” and my Facebook account have little in common. They are both texts that are available to people through the internet. “Ideas” is a blog through the website blogger.com while my facebook account is through the social network facebook.com. With a facebook you have only little control of the appearance of the text while with blogs you have much more personal control of the appearance of the text and the appearance of the layout. In both these websites you can control an extent of the content on the site like the main blog point and you can delete posts if you don’t want it there. With “Idea” Friedman uses no pictures or videos to emphasize his points while on facebook I have added pictures video and have joined groups to show certain things. An example of this is the joining of a group called USC Class of 2011 to let people know where you go to school and when you plan on graduating. If Friedman had added a video to emphasize his point it would be similar.
The targeted audience of both forums is the reader of the website. The main audience of my facebook would be my friends to see what is going on with me while the audience of “Ideas” is anyone that agrees with Friedman’s idea on a particular day. Facebook can be used to convince people of how “cool” a person is. “Ideas” can be used to convince people of a certain idea relating to a topic.
The author of “Ideas” is David Friedman. Friedman is academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field. This qualifies him to give intelligent ideas on many things involving economics and law which include many different topics. Facebook is a site where people can write about themselves. Thus the author of my facebook would be me a college freshman at USC. I am the expert on my life so I can make my facebook the most personal. In “Ideas” some constraints are that the reader will agree with Friedman. Another constraint could be that the reader is intelligent enough to comprehend the writing. One constraint of facebook is that the person reading the article wants to know me or wants to contact me. Facebook does not contain an exigence. The exigence of “Ideas” is the reasoning behind his argument.