Carr Intro and First Body

Finney 1

Jill Finney

RWS 100

Mr. Werry

03 November 2014

Carr Response Paper

            An avid writer and a well accomplished one at that; Nicholas Carr discusses technology and the affects as well as the extent that Internet is changing our thoughts. Carr has written numerous books on the subject and has an extensive career in writing. Some of his works include being a columnist of the Guardian in London, and published works in Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, the New Republic, MIT Technology Review, and Nature. In the article he published, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Carr discusses the use of the Internet and how he himself is noticing changes within his own mind. Despite the fact that, “The Web has been a godsend [to me] as a writer”, Carr also finds that, “…the Net seems to be chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” The overall argument presented throughout the paper by Carr is that the Internet and online reading and searching is far less thought provoking than reading from a book. Due to this concept that the Internet is causing us to become distracted, or often we can find ourselves “drifting” from long texts, in turn this phenomenon is making us “stupid” as Carr uses in the title of the article. In this paper, I will discuss the strengths of Carr’s arguments as well as the weaknesses through analyzation of Aristotelian Appeals known as logos, pathos, and ethos.

            Carr starts his article through utilizing a theater example from the movie 2001:A Space Odyssey that sets a chilling scene for the remainder of his article, the computer states, “Dave my mind is going, I can feel it. I can feel it.” An emotional appeal to some readers in the audience, despite the fact that Hal is a computer we feel his childlike pleading as if it were human. Carr uses this to lead into what his argument regarding the Internet stands at. Carr reports that, “he can feel it too. Over the past few years I’ve [Carr] had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory”. Much like that of Hal in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, his mind is changing.