TOW # 17 The Surgeon Will Skype you Now

Surgery is something everyone has experienced, whether going under themselves or helping a loved one needing surgery themselves. It’s scary enough as it is with the all the possible risks, so would having a robot doing the surgery make you less scared, or more? Since the 2000s robots have been used to perform surgery on patients and it is become more and more common as technology advances through the years. In her essay, The Surgeon Will Skype You Now, Alexandra Ossola explains the benefits and disadvantages of having a robot remove a tumor, for example, as opposed to a doctor’s own hands. Ossola, a science writer who has contributed to many science journals, wrote this article for anyone who was interested in newer technology, a reader does not have to understand how surgery or robots work in order to read this. She uses a helpful strategy in order for every possible reader to understand. When writing in terms common people do not typically know, she will explain in ways they do. Ossola explains what’s required for robot surgery, “uncompressed video streaming requires a bandwidth of at least 2 megabits per second (that's less than it takes to stream a high-definition video from YouTube).” Using term such as megabits can mean nothing to a reader, so explaining the concept through youtube allows every reader to understand the concept. This helps allow her article to be accessible to a wider audience. Although this is an article, it uses visual devices to emphasize points to the reader. After explaining all the benefits of robot surgeons, there is a break in text and three big words in bigger and bolder letters, “There is lag.” This acts as a transition from only speaking of the benefits to taking both sides into account. Only bolding the three simple words shows how simple the problem for robot surgeons is, it’s the same problem any reader has while trying to watch Netflix. Not only does this device provide emphasis and transition to the problem, it connects the problem to the reader. I believe this article achieved its purpose, as someone who only has a basic understanding of science and technology I still completely understood and was invested in this interesting article.