Vanessa Pacheco U of U Writing Final Is Google Making Us Stupid? Is the online world important to you?

Maybe its getting to your way of life. Technology has made life more relaxed. Having fast access on your fingertips can make life easy but theres a possibility that the process of thinking is affected and is changing over time. That is according to Nicholas Carr, an author who uses the rhetorical devices of pathos, ethos and logos to convince the reader that technological advances have negatively affected our way of processing thoughts in our minds. Pathos is used since the very beginning when the author uses a famous movie and one of its scenes to appeal to readers. He then relates to those characters by giving his personal experiences with the way that Google has affected him. I can feel it, tooNow my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if Im always dragging my wayward brain back to text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. (pg.1) Opinion, emotions, and relatable language are used in his story, elements of pathos along with the authors personal anecdotes. Another example of pathos is when he uses the vivid language when he describes his thinking patterns. My mind now expects to take in information the way

the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. (pg.2) He uses numerous sensory details to appeal to the reader and rouse emotion and give the reader a picture of whats happening. A big factor when it comes to persuading the reader that technology takes away from your thinking abilities is logos. Carr uses research done in the past to convince readers that there is truth to his arguments. He uses the past invention of a clock to get to the point that even this simple device has changed our ways. The clocks methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something awayIn deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clockAnd thats what we are seeing today [Internet] is becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV. (pg.4) The author is using this example and comparison to say that we are losing more and more, the internet is becoming too much of our everything. Something the author also does is putting in credible sources and also stating their background that adds to the credible element as so: *an+ MIT computer scientist observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. (pg.4) This citing alone gives the article trustworthiness. We are not only what we read, says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.

We are how we read.Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged. (pg.3) This reference is used to the authors advantage because it gives the reader evidence that there is research and professionals that provide the evidence that works with his interpretations and viewpoints. Ethos is used when he relates and appeals to his fellow bloggers. Many people follow bloggers because they relate to them and what they are going through narrates to what his point is. The blogger Bruce Freidman claims how the internet has altered *the+ mental habits and [now he] has almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or print (pg.2) Bloggers is an audience that he calls on because they can relate to everyday people. Another factor used is how he doesnt act superior to his readers but gives them the benefit of the doubt in a way being respectful of their thoughts also. So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. (pg.7) The author seems fair minded for the most part. In conclusion, the author uses the rhetorical devices of logos, pathos, and ethos in his article. Pathos is used in his words choices and comparisons to appeal emotionally to the reader. Logos is used when he relates to past research done and his credible sources. Ethos is used when he relates to specific audiences and to everyday people while giving a chance to the

reader to think for themselves. Pathos, Ethos and Logos was used to convince the readers that like his title the internet is slowing down our thinking patterns.