I am analyzing Nicholas Carr's essay titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", where he supports his message using the pathos associated with his use of allusions, anecdotes, testimonies, and powerful diction. In the beginning of his essay, Carr provides the reader with an allusion to Stanley Kubrick's "A Space Odyssey". This reference reads "'Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?' So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut... 'Dave, my mind is going,' HAL says, forlornly. 'I can feel it. I can feel it'" (Carr 1). Although this impactful quote could be considered an allusion, it is also an anecdote. In addition to this, powerful diction such as "pleads" and "fornlornly" is used to stir up emotions of sadness in the reader. …show more content…
All of these components add up to greatly increase the pathos present in Carr's essay. He ties this reference to the current state of the human population by claiming that we, too, are losing our minds. This puts the reader in the shoes of the computer, and it is a jarring realization. Furthermore, Carr uses a testimony from Bruce Friedman, a blogger who focuses on the use of computers in medicine. Friedman admits that "[he] can't read 'War and Peace' anymore... [he's] lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it" (Carr 3). Through the inclusion of this quote in his essay, Carr builds his pathos as he offers the reader a frighteningly relateable example of humans losing their ability to comprehend expansive texts. Phrases such as "lost the ability to" depict a vain struggle to regain his patience. Overall, this testimony proves that no humans- not even people well versed in writing- are out of the grasp of laziness.
Everyday millions of people across the globe use the internet; many never even leave the computer desk. In the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” the author Nicholas Carr, brings up the point that our brains are losing their attention span. He explained that many, including himself, are finding it harder to read long groups of text and articles. Though Carr brings up a good point, his argument lacked factual information, was a little dull, contained next to no credible sources, and is all over the board with he’s ideas, all of these things made his argument weak. Carr’s opening paragraph really grabs your attention, by using quotes from the movie A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick’s.
Every day new technology is advancing to makes its way into the world where it is used more efficiently. In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,”, Nicholas Carr claims that human are no longer able to focus on longer texts due to the rise of digital texts. Nicholas Carr includes strong evidences to support his statement; and through the usage of ethos and pathos, he is able to convince his readers that “the Net is becoming a universal medium” (Carr). Examples of Ethos are evident throughout the article making Carr’s argument deductively valid. Nicholas Carr is known for his reputation as someone who has written influential pieces and earning many awards for his accomplishments.
Within Is Google Making Us Stupid? By Nicholas Carr, the rhetorical devices that Carr uses allows for deep meaning to develop in the text. It also evokes emotions within the reader which makes him or her question if the internet is actually making him or her stupid. Carr also uses the different devices to persuade the audiences that the internet is actually more harm than beneficial. By using the devices he is able to make the reader rethink what he or she has thought before and question his or her thoughts.
Harvard Writer, Nicholas Carr, in his Advocacy article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Describes the altering effects of the internet and search engines on our brains. Carr´s purpose is to get the reader aware of the impact the internet has on our everyday life. He adopts a informative tone in order to appeal emotionally and logically to his audience. Carr begins his advocacy for the internet by acknowledging that in ¨A Space Odyssey¨ when they rely too much on Artificial Intelligence it could get a human killed, in this example the supercomputer HAL almost drifted astronaut Dave Bowman into a deep space death by the malfunctioning machine; Showing that the astronaut is superior than a machine. He appeals to the emotion of sadness by admitting that “I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something has been tinkering with my brain” he is “not thinking the way i used to.”
Are readers to believe that the internet decreases one’s intelligence? Nicholas Carr, a prolific writer, argues that the more people use the web the harder it is to concentrate and stay focused. Is it fair to say the internet decreases people’s intelligence just because it can be more difficult to focus? Nicholas Carr’s argument in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” could be problematic due to flawed evidence and assumptions and possibly failure to address different points of view. First of all, Carr does provide some flawed evidence.
The writer creates a distinctive and academic diction through the use multiple quotes from studies that agree with his point. One thing that goes hand and hand with tone are different types of rhetorical devices. A rhetorical and literary device that he uses right off the bat in his second paragraph is an anecdote. In fact, after the movie quote the next thing he says is “I can feel it,too” to start his next paragraph. When Carr says,” I'm not thinking the way I use to… naturally had become a struggle.”
Carr also shares that most of his literary friends and known bloggers have a hard time with attentiveness and are having similar experiences as Carr. This indicates that he is not only talking about something he is experiencing, but an issue that is going on in today’s society.
Summary of "Is Google Making Us Stupid" by Nicholas Carr The internet has become a necessity for many people these days, it provides quick information and is a primary source of knowledge. In the article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid", the author Nicholas Carr, is describing the effects that technology has on the human brain. Carr begins with a scene from the end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, where supercomputer HAL is being disconnected by astronaut Dave Bowman who was sent to space on a deadly mission by the machine.
Google made me stupid because I googled all the test answers and failed my test. Nicholas Carr, an American author, wrote “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” published in 2008 in The Atlantic, and he argues about the effects of the Internet on literacy, cognition, and culture. Carr starts his argument by taking an ending scene from a movie called A Space Odyssey. Carr uses logos throughout the whole essay, but also gives himself credibility by giving evidence that he knows what is going on in his mind. I feel that this argument is effective.
Carr starts of the essay by sharing his and other people’s experience with losing the ability to focus deeply. He dwells further into this by
By doing this the evidence from the other writers keeps the reader drawn in to show the effects the internet has on us. Carr says that the articles he gained information from said, “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense”; that the way we read now is what you would call ‘skimming’ or reading “horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins”. When reading on the internet, people have stopped reading entire articles, instead we bounce from site to site until we gather the information we need. Carr puts this information there so the reader can relate to it. In the article, he uses to support his argument, he agrees how people, lose attention rather rapidly when reading on the internet, and it is causing people to lose concentration when looking at physical readings.
He writes about a feeling of a change of thought process he gets when he reads. Reading books or lengthy articles came easily to Carr, but now he cannot stay focused on what he reads for more than a few pages. He believes his struggle to concentrate on long texts originates from spending too much time online, saying that any kind of research he needs can be found and fulfilled in minutes. Carr also explains that reading online has been converted to skimming pages and searching for summaries of his desired info, instead of reading full length articles. When an author, such as Carr, can directly relate to the subject, it makes his writing much more sincere and
He tries the explain the natural development of technology and how it is leading us to artificial intelligence, but in doing this he does not add into in his argument. The objective of companies like Google attempting to supplement our intelligence with artificial intelligence does not have any measurable outcome in the real world. The counterargument is trying to take something that he believes may happen in the future vs. something that he has explained to be experienced over time. While it is possible that he is trying to warn about the future to this problem, this argument does not supplement his argument that we are losing our attention span when it comes to long readings online. Carr is only deviated from what he is trying to convince the reader, and this only adds to the tangled mess that his arguments are in
He includes a quote from the movie, 2001: Space Odyssey, which states “‘Dave my mind is going’ HAL says, forlornly. ‘I can feel it. I can feel it.”’ (Carr 556).
Initially, Nicholas Carr is stating that our availability to this information is making us lethargic, “stupid”, and unwilling to learn. This availability to