Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, Nicholas Carr in his article, Is Google is making us stupid?, addresses his beliefs that the internet is creating artificial intelligence as it effects our mind and the way we think. Throughout the article Carr supports this claim with rhetorical devices as well as Aristotelian appeals. Carr begins by using pathos by stating an anecdote from a scene in the movie A Space Odyssey, then uses logos by stating factual evidence and statistics, lastly Carr uses ethos by conceding to opposition and stating appropriate vocabulary. In the article he compares the past and present and how the Internet has changed not only himself, but also people as a whole. In order to show his credibility, Carr uses research and …show more content…
Instead people skim the pages and lose focus on the text quickly. This works in the text because it shows how we now have short intension spans and would rather browse through the text. Carr uses this strategy in the quote in order to validate his argument to the audience through logic and reasoning. The effectiveness of the strategy is that it allows the reader to evoke a cognitive and rational response since the reader is able to relate to the text. Carr’s use of factual evidence from various scientific studies and expert testimony are very convincing logos appeals. Although using the Aristotelian appeal of logos when stating facts and evidence can be incredibly effective, Carr also uses other strategies in order to further his claim and strengthen his …show more content…
Together they work together as a whole in order to persuade his audience of those involved in technology. Carr uses these strategies in order to back up his information and validate his point. Carr begins by using pathos by stating an anecdote from the movie A Space Odyssey, then he uses logos by stating factual evidence and statistics, lastly Carr uses ethos by stating appropriate vocabulary and conceding to opposition. Throughout the article Carr compares the past and present and how the Internet has changed not only himself, but also people. In order to show his credibility, Carr uses research and examples of other credible writers who have the same beliefs as he does on the Internet. Due to the article being lengthy in text we are able to assume that Carr does that on purpose in order to validate his point that the Internet is affecting our mind as it shortens our attention span and ability to think creatively. The purpose of the excerpt is to persuade his audience of those involved in technology that people in the society today are unable to have complete focus on a longer text due to the Internet causing us to artificial intelligence. For this purpose, Carr develops an influential tone for his audience
Carr captures his audience's attention by using an allusion from “Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001, A Space Odyssey”. He stated the essay with “Dave, stop will you?” and the Supercomputer HAL plead. Any reader who has watch A Space Odyssey or interested in supercomputers to read his article. He highlights the fact that a computer could think for you. The states, “I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain(Is google making us stupid? By Carr page 2)”. He made a point that the more people are found of the internet the more we lose ability to deep think.
Anecdotes have become very influential in the forming of opinions. We often base our decisions off customer reviews or personal recommendations, rather than product labels or factual records. Though it is still important to cumulate and explore the proper avenues of information, it can be challenging to decipher between quantitative and qualitative data these days. Nicholas Carr finds an effective balance of anecdote and research in his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He begins to illustrate his theory to the reader by starting off with a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where a supercomputer nearly kills a man. To accurately assess whether this connection is effectively executed, we must analyze the relationship between
Author Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google making us Stupid,” discusses how the use of the computer affects our thought process. Carr starts out talking about his own experience as a writer and how he felt like “something had been tinkering with his brain, remapping his neural circuitry and reprogramming his memory”(313). Basically, he is acknowledging that since he started using the Internet his research techniques have changed. Carr believes that before he would immerse himself in books, lengthy articles and long stretches of prose allowing his mind to get caught up in the narrative or the
Have you ever been reading online, and just cannot concentrate? If you have, you're not alone. American Author, Nicholas Carr was a Harvard graduate, who wrote "Is Google making us Stupid." This non-fiction news article informed us about how modern day technology affects our learning or reading. With all this information Carr, explains how google is making us stupid. Nicholas Carr uses Ethos, which is an appeal to authority and credibility. He uses Pathos, which is an appeal to your emotions. He also uses logos, an appeal to logic and reason. Nicholas Carr developed his thesis by including ethos, pathos, and logos.
In composing “Is Google Making Us More Stupid” Nicholas Carr wants his audience to be feared by the internet while at the same time he wants his work to seem more creditable. Nicholas Carr uses many different types of evidence to show us that we should be scared and feared as well as his credibility. Carr’s audience is people who think like him, who find themselves getting lost on the internet while reading something, someone who is educated and uses the internet to look up the answers to questions or to read an article or book.
Technology surrounds us every day in the modern world. It has become almost a necessity to most who use it, while others would beg to differ. There is debate surrounding both articles written by Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and Jamais Cascio, “Get Smart” both arguments provide opinion and evidence about the use of technology. Carr discusses how the use of the computers affects our thought process. Carr begins by talking about his own experience as a writer and how he felt like “something had been tinkering with his brain, remapping his neural circuitry and reprogramming his memory”. (Carr, 1). On the contrary Cascio’s article "Get Smart," Cascio urges
In Nicholas Carr 's article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” he discusses the effect that technology has on our brains as the world becomes more advanced. He gives examples of how technology has helped us and hurts us. Nicholas Carr tells about his own experiences with technology and others as well. In this paper, I will talk about the first part of Carr’s article, I will then agree with Nicholas Carr, give examples from his article, talk on his structure, sources, counterarguments or solutions, and end with why I agree with what he has said.
Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and Sherry Turkle’s “How Computers Change the Way We Think” both discuss the influence of technology to their own understanding and perspective. The first work by Nicholas Carr is about the impact technology has on his mind. He is skeptical about the effect it could cause in the long term of it. He gives credible facts and studies done to prove his point. While Sherry Turkle’s work gives a broad idea of the impact of technology has caused through the years. She talks about the advances in technology and how it is changing how people communicate, learn and think. In both works “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and “How Computers Change the Way We Think” the authors present
Trying to reflect the fears instilled in himself through comparison to an unrealistic movie. I believe that the internet hasn’t changed everyone’s the way the he says its changed his. I think that people who were born into the world of technology have the ability to analyze into a deeper thought what is needed and skim for instant answer when it’s not needed. On the other side those whom have been forced to adapt to it, such as Carr, find themselves losing abilities they once relied on because they were taught growing up to do both things. Now that the internet has forced them to adapt to it, they can’t focus of doing both types of thinking. The complexity of our minds is deep and that can’t be made shallow by the ability to get instant gratification of information. We simply begin to rule out unimportant things, once the important thing is found then it can be analyzed. Although Carr says his mind isn’t going as far as it used to, clearly that’s exactly what he did in this essay. He used the older “traditional way” of over-analyzing unnecessary things to reach a point that ends up being moot. Clearly, his use of logos, ethos and pathos, although present were not enough to prove his opinion to be
The internet is our conduit for accessing a wide variety of information. In his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” Nicholas Carr discusses how the use of the internet affects our thought process in being unable to focus on books or longer pieces of writing. The author feels that “someone, or something, has been tinkering with [his] brain” over the past few years (Carr 731). While he was easily able to delve into books and longer articles, Carr noticed a change in his research techniques after starting to use the internet. He found that his “concentration often [started] to drift after two or three pages” and it was a struggle to go back to the text (Carr 732). His assertion is that the neural circuits in his brain have changed as a result of surfing endlessly on the internet doing research. He supports this statement by explaining how his fellow writers have had similar experiences in being unable to maintain their concentrations. In analyzing Carr’s argument, I disagree that the internet is slowly degrading our capacity for deep reading and thinking, thereby making us dumber. The Web and Google, indeed, are making us smarter by allowing us access to information through a rapid exchange of ideas and promoting the creativity and individualization of learning.
The article begins with the depiction of a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey in which the astronaut Dave Bowman unplugs the supercomputer HAL. Carr uses this to tie in his feelings that, like HAL, someone or something is toying with the wiring of his brain. This is a strong emotional appeal. Carr intends to quickly gain his audience’s attention with the feeling of being “unplugged”, and possibly to gain the sympathies of readers who have felt a similar feeling. Carr proceeds to talk about how he can no longer become absorbed in an article or book, saying “my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages.” Again, this works as a strong emotional appeal. English buffs - Carr’s likely primary audience - who read this article may agree...
...al advancement. He supported his claim of cause with supportive claims of fact and value, appealing to ethos. Both Carr and Cascio provided valid points through an appeal of logos to explain how technology affects our society and continues to change the world around us. They both had very convincing arguments. However, Carr’s article proved to be more effective because he provided the emotional approach and more supportive evidence, logical reasoning, and a skeptical ideal to relate to his readers.
Steven Pinker and Nicholas Carr share their opposing views on the effects that mass media can have on the brain. In Carr’s Atlantic Monthly article “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” it explores his viewpoints on how increased computer use affects our thought process in a negative manner. Carr critically analyzes that having widespread access to the internet via the internet has done more harm by disabling our ability to think complexly like it is the researching in a library. On the other hand, Pinker expresses how the media improves our brain’s cognitive functions. Pinker expresses that we should embrace the new technological advances and all we need is willpower to not get carried away in the media. Although both authors bring very valid arguments
The author attempts to build a focus around the importance preserving our mind, he writes, “But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps a new sense of the self. ‘We are not what we read…. We are how we read’ (395). Provided that Carr focuses on the safeguarding of our minds his intentions are to appeal into an individual’s emotion and bring them to the conclusion that if we continue to let the internet distract us we will lose our self’s. He recognizes that when speaking of an individual’s self they are mindfully more open to accepting what you tell them and he uses this as another one of his writing strategies. Nicholas Carr writes, “As we are drained of our ‘inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,’ Foreman concluded, we risk turning into ‘pancake people—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”’ (399) by adding this statement within the essay, he is drastically appealing to a reader’s emotion. The conclusion drawn from this claim triggers the reader’s need to defend their identity consequently these emotions triggered by possibilities help the reader give into the authors argument. The author appeals to the audience’s emotion by encompassing their sense of true self and
According to www.telegraph.co.uk, “[y]oung people aged between 16 and 24 spend more than 27 hours a week on the internet.” Certainly this much internet usage would have an effect on someone. What exactly is the effect of using the internet too much? Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” argues that we are too reliant on the internet and it is making the us dim-witted and shortens our attention span. While Clive Thompson’s article “Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better” states that technology is not only a collection of knowledge, it also a method of sharing and recording our own knowledge. I fall between both Carr and Thompson. I agree with car on his points of us being too reliant on the internet but disagree when he states that it is making us less intelligent. Meanwhile, I also support Thompson’s statement that the internet allows us to assimilate vast amounts of knowledge but disagree with his opinion on how we should be reliant on