In 'Attached To Technology and Paying a Price' Matt Richtel writes about how
technology has grown substantially over the past few decades and how it is affecting different
aspects of everyday life. In the article Richtel tells about how one particular family, the
Campbells, are affected by technology while focusing mainly on the head of the family, Mr.
Campbell, in order to further support the point that he is trying to make. Through his use of
Kairos and Stasis Richtel is able to successfully make his argument known and prove his point.

In 'Attached To Technology, And Paying A Price', the author Matt Richtel starts the
article by immediately by giving one example of how technology has had a negative effect on
Mr. Campbell's life. 'When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his
in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it. Not just for a day or two, but 12 days'.
By using this particular moment Richtel was able to start his article off with a strong
point that would enthrall his reader's into wanting to read more and it effectively supports the
title of the article. Richtel then goes on to tell a little bit more about how technology and
multitasking affects Mr. Campbell's life, then he starts to refer to proven facts that support his
ideas against technology and trying to multitask. 'While many people say multitasking makes
them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multiaskers actually have more trouble
focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress'.
Richtel then goes on to actually quote a scientist and talk about their findings, in
order to support his claim. By doing this Richtel is able to effectively to prove that all the
multitasking Mr. Campbell and others do is not only unnecessary but also harmful to their health.
After further elaborating on the art of multitasking, Richtel then transitions into talking about
how Mr. Campbell's technology obsession affects his wife and children.

He opens by describing a scene of Mr. Campbell and his son playing video games while
has daughter sits close by watching them. Mentioning this seemingly insignificant moment
helped show how the actions of one family member can affect others. Mrs. Campbell, the mother
of the two kids, recalls moments when could hardly get the kids attention due to them being
distracted by technology. Getting Mrs. Campbell to offer her input on the situation further proves
his argument because up to this point he was giving his outside opinion but now he has the
opinion of someone in the family who sees the negative effects first hand. Richtel wraps up the
article by telling the opinion of an expert who says he fears 'the ultimate risk of heavy
technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one
another, even in the same room'. By including this person's opinion in the article
Richtel was able to slightly insinuate that this person's biggest concern was slowly becoming a
reality. Richtel's use of examples, proven facts, and eyewitness testimonies helped to support the
argument that he is trying to make. However, to fully breakdown Richtel's argument the
practices of Kairos and Stasis Theory must be taken into account.

Kairos, to put it simply, is 'situational time or a period during which opportunities appear
to those who are prepared to take advantage of them'. Kairos is
extremely important with argumentative writing because it forces the author to think about the
timing urgency, audience, and venue of the subject. In this particular article Richtel effectively
hits all of the major points of Kairos in an effort to prove his argument. In the heart of the age of
technology Richtel couldn't have chosen a better time to write an article about multitasking and
technology and their negative effects on people's everyday lives. With campaigns out about not
texting and driving and the First Lady, Michelle Obama, putting forth the initiative to help kids
become healthier and have more outside activity and less inside activity, Richtel picked the
perfect time to bring up this topic.

While the topic of technology taking over has been a building, ongoing conversation
there is still urgency to this topic in the sense that technology is becoming more and more
prevalent in different areas of life that use to be free of this epidemic. Richtel manages to show
the urgency of this topic while also reaching his target audience. In this article Richtel's main
strategy for supporting his argument is using the situation of one particular family, the
Campbells. The head of the family, Mr. Campbell, is the best example of why technology
overload is still a relevant topic. Mr. Campbell, an entrepreneur, was almost a victim of his own
technology and multitasking when he neglected to respond to the email of a potential investor for
almost two weeks because he was distracted by his many other computer screens and mobile
device. Although this was a gigantic error made by Mr. Campbell, he is just one of
many people who make mistakes like this because they don't understand the seriousness of
what's happening in their lives. One of the other many people affected by this problem is the
matriarch of the household, Mrs. Campbell. While she doesn't use technology as much as her
husband she has also felt the effects such as one regretful moment when she burned her peanut
butter cookies when she was distracted by her cell phone. She then proceeded to try
to bake the cookies a second time, but once again she became distracted by her cell phone and
burned the cookies. These two moments effectively show how the transition in
technological advancement is taking a toll on people's everyday lives and it needs to be taken
more seriously. Also by including the Campbell family in his article, Richtel effectively, showed
that he was trying to gain the attention of families in a family household setting. For an argument
such as this, reaching out to the family level in a household setting is the best option for Richtel
to have his argument heard because this technological plague that is currently taking place is
being led by the younger generations of pre-teens, teens, and young college students. As a whole
Richtel did a marvelous job of using Kairos to his advantage but he didn't just limit himself to
this; he also incorporated stasis theory.

Stasis is a way of thinking in which a person thoroughly examines the issue that is being
discussed by asking questions. In order to effectively complete the stasis
process an author must understand and examine both sides of the argument. Richtel does a good
job of clearly displaying stasis in this article. Richtel first displays stasis by posing the question
of whether or not someone could affect the brain in a negative way by 'rewiring themselves to
handle the load'. By posing this question Richtel forces his readers to stop and think
if they had done this to themselves. He also takes this a step further by telling of how Mr. Ophir,
someone who worked for Israeli intelligence, wondered the same thing. He then
dives into discussing multitasking and the common misconceptions that people have.

While it is important to pose questions that engage the readers, the biggest focus point of
stasis theory is for the author to recognize and acknowledge how people might oppose their
argument. Richtel exhibits this by devoting an entire section of his article to refute the common
misconceptions that people have about multitasking. Within the section Richtel tells about
multiple experiments in which there would be two groups: one in which the subjects were
classified as multitaskers after answering a series of questions and the other in which the subjects
were classified as non-multitaskers after a series of questions. 'In a test created by Mr. Ophir and
his colleagues, subjects at a computer were briefly shown an image of red rectangles. Then they
saw a similar image and were asked whether any of the rectangles had moved. It was a simple
task until the addition of a twist: blue rectangles were added, and the subjects were told to ignore
them'. By telling of this experiment and including the results that multitaskers did
poorly and non-multitaskers did fairly well further proves his argument and refutes any possible
rebuttal.

When analyzing an argumentative piece of writing it is imperative that as a reader you
can identify qualities of Kairos and Stasis within the writing. In 'Attached To Technology And
Paying a Price', Richtel effectively displays the qualities of both Kairos and Stasis. By doing
this not only did he prove his point, but he was also successful in convincing me to support his
argument by acknowledging the existence of multitasking, giving detailed information on it, and
telling the negative effects of it and how it can be stopped. This article successfully displays all
the necessary qualities of an argumentative essay.

