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Mikayla Christiansen

Erin Rogers

B3 Writing 2010

28 January 2017

Rhetorical Analysis of Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In this article, Nicholas Carr explores the effect the Internet is having on the human mind. From

the beginning, he encaptures the readers with a movie scene and then continues to create a widely

relatable article by including common experiences from daily life. Through the use of rhetorical devices,

he builds his argument that the Internet is changing the ways human brains are hardwired. Carr uses

pathos, ethos, and logos to create a strong article that both connects with his readers and effectively gets

his point across.

Carr opens his article with pathos by introducing a scene from Stanley Kubricks movie 2001: A

Space Odyssey. Here, Dave Bowman is unplugging HAL, an artificial intelligence, because Dave was

nearly killed by the malfunctioning robot. HAL pleads with Dave to leave him alone. Dave, my mind

is going, HAL says, forlornly. I can feel it. I can feel it. Carr then begins his argument by saying, I

can feel it too. Right off of the bat, a strong pathos is introduced. The use of this movie scene serves the

purpose of immediately connecting with the audience. By opening the article this way, the readers are

automatically reminded of the emotional connection they hold to their technological devices. In

accordance with this, Carrs statement that he can feel it too further ties in the connection between

humans and technology--perhaps an unhealthy, overwhelming connection--and leaves his readers

feeling a river of emotions, maybe guilt and/or fear being among them, from the very first paragraph.

The way Carr opens his article is extremely effective, and his use of pathos serves an important purpose,

drawing in his readers from paragraph one.

Carr continues to use pathos throughout the article, always keeping his readers enthralled by

what he has to say. In order to maintain pathos, Carr often inserts powerful, emotional statements. For
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example, when he was first introducing himself and the effect the Internet has had on the way he thinks,

he said, Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet

Ski. This sentence contains a large amount of imagery, leaving room for the readers to dive in and

really visualize Carrs recent decline in mental cognition. Bringing the fact that Carr no longer processes

information the same way due to the rise of the Internet to life gives the audience more than just words

on a page. It gives them an emotional, relatable life story. Another example of when Carr uses a

pathos-filled statement is when he illustrates the ways that humans have allowed artificial intelligence to

overtake their lives: Its becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our

calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV. This quote brings awareness to the reader of just

how much he or she relies on the Internet for daily life. The Internet is no longer just a nice convenience

to have to use occasionally. It has become a necessity that humans rely on for all aspects of life. This

statement brings awareness to the readers of just how much they truly rely on the Internet. Not only does

the message behind the words allow for pathos, but the structure of the sentence does, as well. Because

of the way that Carr structured the sentence, his thought seems to go on and on forever, as does the list

of ways the Internet has taken over the lives of humans across the globe.

Aside from pathos, Carr also uses ethos to build his argument. At the opening of the article, he

builds his credibility and exercises ethos by creating a profile for himself. He tells that he is a writer who

has been spending a significant amount of time online for over a decade. As a writer, the Internet is

extremely helpful for him: a world of information is at the tip of his fingers. Because he opened by

telling that he uses the Internet often, he built his credibility to prove that he is well-acquainted with the

Internet, and therefore has the authority to write on this subject.

Carr continues to build ethos throughout his article by quoting well-known, informed, and

powerful sources: sociologists, neuroscientists, The New York Times Magazine, computer scientists,

Plato, bloggers, the founders of Google, etc. By citing credible sources, his own credibility is boosted.

Another extremely important thing that Carr does is include the opinions of those who he does not
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necessarily agree with and then respectfully explains why he himself believes otherwise. For example,

Carr quotes Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, who say that the ultimate goal of

Google is to create a search engine that is smarter than mankind and directly connected to the human

brain because man would be better off this way. Carr then goes on to say:

Such an ambition is a natural one, even an admirable one.Still, their easy assumption that wed

all be better off if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence

is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series

of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. Ambiguity is not an opening for

insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster

processor and a bigger hard drive.

Here, Carr is quite polite in his disagreement with Brin and Page, but he uses their opinions to build his

own, separate argument. Carr presents his opponents opinion, then explains why he finds their ideas to

be unsettling. This use of ethos is very effective. It builds Carrs credibility because it shows that he

has not created a one-sided, biased article. Arguments are always more believable when both sides are

presented.

Logos is the most evident rhetorical device used in Carrs article -- it is full of information,

claims, and evidence. The article begins with Carr saying that the Internet seems to be...chipping away

[his] capacity for concentration and contemplation. [His] mind now expects to take in information the

way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. He doesnt leave the claim as this,

however. He collects evidence from several others in the same position as himself to backup the things

he is saying. For example, Scott Karp was a literary major in college and would read quite regularly, but

has completely stopped reading books, and he worries that the Internet has changed his way of thinking.

Another man, Bruce Friedman, seemed to have the same problem. He often blogged about computers in

medicine and was an employee at the University of Michigan Medical School. Friedman lost his ability
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to read through books and even short articles and resorted to skimming through all passages. These are

individual men who gave further evidence to Carrs claims.

To further provide evidence for his claims, Carr included the results of study done by scholars

from University College London. These scholars observed the way that the subjects interacted with the

online articles and sources they approached. The results of the study found that those who resorted to

reading online tended to use a sort of skimming and scanning method, rather than taking the time to

completely read through an article. The take-away from the research was that perhaps new forms of

reading are emerging due to the Internet--the very argument that Carr was building through his article.

Carr also included research from Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist. Maryanne

explained how reading is not like speech. Humans are born with instinctive speech skills, but this is not

the case when it comes to reading--people must teach themselves how to decode and translate languages.

She goes on to say that when learning how to read different languages, etc. many different mental

circuitries are used, and that it is very likely that the circuits used when reading on the Internet will be

completely different from those used when reading print.

One other example that Carr provides is from James Olds, a neuroscientist, who tells of the

brains malleability. The brain, according to Olds, has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly,

altering the way it functions. This is the point that Carr was trying to get at. The fact that the brain can

reprogram itself leads to the possibility of the Internet having some type of effect on the brains

hardwiring.

Through his strong use of rhetorical devices -- namely pathos, ethos, and logos -- Nicholas Carr

is able to build a strong article that both informs and persuades the audience. He uses these devices

effectively and his purpose is served.