Audience and Genre

Defining The Audience and Genre for My Public Argument

In this post, I will try to define for myself what people will be interested in hearing about my research questions in the controversy of artificial intelligence, why they will be interested, and where they will go to find my public argument in addition to what they'll do with my argument.

Mika Lorenzen "Screenshot of Sculpting Plasma as Seen on Leonardo.info" 2 November 2015 via leonardo.info.
Creator Usage of Screenshot, taken of the free sample article "Sculpting Ionized Plasma" by Jean-Louis Lhermitte.

One group who I believe will be the audience for my public debate is skeptics of artificial intelligence. I believe people who are skeptical over AI's place in our society's future due to their fears over the technology will be interested in my public argument because I will be trying to pose a new outlook on AI that will ultimately be in an attempt to convince them that the advancement and development of AI tech is progress that we should be excited for.

• I think that wired.com will be a place I could publish my argument. To publish on wired.com, I would have to create an article with limited visual elements that mostly speaks about how AI will affect our society, as wired.com is an online magazine that discusses how new technologies will influence cultures, politics, and economies.
• Here is an example of a wired.com article called "Connecting the Poor Is the Best Hope for Ending Poverty."
• Here is another example of an article from wired.com called "The Upside of Artificial Intelligence Development."

• I think that slate.com will be a potential location to publish my public argument on. While slate.com publishes short, argumentative articles across a variety of topics such as economics, politics, and even opinion articles, a new project with Slate, New America, and Arizona State University and called Future Tense: The Citizen's Guide to the Future is a subsidiary online news source from slate.com that discusses how current technologies will impact our society and our lives in the future. 
• This article on AI, "Striking the Balance on Artificial Intelligence," is from Future Tense.
• This article about the future use of Mars' recently-discovered water called "If There Is Water on Mars, Who Gets to Use It?" is also from the Future Tense project.

The other group who I think will be an audience to my public debate is artists. Specifically, I think artists who are either excited and searching for new media to work in or who are skeptical that AI could be a legitimate artistic medium will both be the audiences of my argument because I will be founding my public argument on art and how it will apply to AI to create new artistic potential. I will need to keep in mind that not all artists may agree or disagree with me, so I will have to present my argument with a sense of open-minded excitement and confidence.

• I think that Discover magazine, specifically the online magazine, will be a place I could publish my argument on artificial intelligence with respect to art. Discover is a general science magazine, but does have specific tags for "art and technology" that display how technology can be used for art. These articles are very image-heavy, and have less text and are in a slideshow-like presentation on the webpage.
• Here is an example of an article that shows images of underwater sculptures acting as coral reefs in Mexico, with text accompanying each picture, explaining the events.
• Additionally, here is an article that shows how various technologies and natural organisms are influencing art today.

• Potentially, I could publish my public argument at the Leonardo Journal, which is associated with the MIT Press. While this genre would be much more formal, as I'm unsure if it has opinion pieces, the types of articles seen on Leonardo directly discuss how new technologies can lead to unique and even unorthodox art forms, which would fit my topic of AI as an artistic medium.
• Here is a sample article from the Leonardo Journal about a historical overview of electrical manipulation of human bodies in performance art.
• And here is another sample article about making sculptures out of plasma, as it appeared in the Leonardo Journal.