Rough intro and body paragraphs

Today, we have access to technology at just the tip of our fingers. Instead of going to the library and researching, we are able to type in any question into Google and almost instantly have thousands of results. Some claim that the advancement of technology has actually changed the way people think in a negative way. My instinctive thought is that this technology and access to knowledge would actually improve how we think. Nicholas Carr, a columnist and author who focuses on the affect of technology on our mentality, disagrees. In Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, he claims that the extreme use and reliance of the internet has deteriorated people’s overall cognitive behavior. He believes that people have smaller attention spans and worsened critical thinking and reading skills. In this essay I will examine the rhetorical strategies Carr uses in his article. I will show how they support his argument and why he chooses the particular strategy.

One of the rhetorical strategies that Carr uses to help convince the reader of his argument is the Aristotelian appeals, ethos. Ethos is used to give credibility to the author. Carr states in the beginning of his article, “immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy” and “for more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing”(58). This gives Carr credibility because it shows that he has actually experienced what he is writing about. He shows that he is a literary type and has used the internet often in the past decade. These two things are the main components of his claim. It’s hard to believe an author when he or she is talking about something that has never happened to them. He says that he is the literary type because if he just said that he uses the internet and can’t stay focused, there would be nothing to compare it to and his attention deficit could have easily been present before the internet use. Shows that isn't just blaming the generation, so doesn't offend younger generations. His demographic in the magazine this was posted in is more of his generation, literary types(same as Carr).