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Google Making USupid Logos

Decent Essays

In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (2008), Nicholas Carr maintains that the advent of the Internet has produced a shallow generation of information customers who lack the ability to deeply engage with and critically think about a text. To support the argument, Carr draws on personal and historical anecdotes and one scientific study. The purpose of Carr’s article is to open a dialogue about the potentially adverse effects the Internet could have on humans’ cognitive processes. Carr establishes an informal relationship with the audience, who are generally well-educated, upper-middle class individuals. Because the audience is educated, they are very capable of critically thinking. However, Carr’s use of other rhetorical strategies disarms them and detracts from the dearth of logos. His essay is rife with numerous unfounded premises, poor evidence, and logical fallacies. Because of this lack of logos is in a way compensated by including numerous appeals to ethos and pathos, the audience is likely to find the article persuasive unless they re-read the article deeply with a critical lens. Carr’s thesis is founded on two main premises: first, the population’s …show more content…

The study has several validity issues: first, there was no control group, nor was there a pre-test. This means that there was no baseline to compare the results to, nor was there a control group to determine if the change was a result of the variable in question (the Internet). Second, the study only examined journal databases, which are frequented by students and researchers more often than the general population. Therefore, the sample is not representative of the general population and the results cannot be generalized to the broader population, which Carr did. Because this methodologically unsound study was the only one he cited, it is evident the essay lacks logos. Therefore, the first premise cannot stand from a logical

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