Ian Allgier 2/19/14 U of U Writing Rhetorical Analysis Rhetorical devices are seen everywhere in our daily lives.

We see them in every ad we look at, and every piece of text we read, and it is important to be able to see how an article is written in order understand the main message. The article I decided to read was called Is Google Making Us Stupid written by Nicholas Carr. In this article he goes on to explain how the change in technology changes how our brains work when it comes to taking in information. The author uses logos, ethos, and pathos to pull the reader in and explain how our brains have changed with the addition of the Net. Logos is used a lot by reasoning why google is causing us to change. Nicholas Carr firsts starts to use logos by saying how many things our minds are bombarded with every time we go on the internet. Foraging in the Webs info-thicketsreading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link Pg. 2 He is using logos here by reasoning saying that doing all of these things trying to keep his mind busy while also trying to work cant be good for your brain. He then goes on to talk about an experiment preformed to see how different languages and reading make our brains function differently. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in

those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. Pg. 3 This is showing logic because we can make the assumption that if the way someone reads can change the circuitry in the brain then the internet is probably doing the same thing. The author later relates this to how circuits woven by the Net could be very different from the ones we have from reading books. He goes on to compare the Net to the clock. in deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock. This is lo gos since he is reasoning that the Net could become the next clock. But it also has pathos in it as well no one wants to be told that our life is being run by a little device just like no one wants to be told that the way we think is being controlled by the Net. The author uses Pathos by telling stories to make the reader feel more connected to what is being said. We first see Pathos right from the beginning he starts his article with a story about A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick he then relates this to himself I can feel it, too. Over the past few years Ive had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isnt gong-so far as I can tell-but its changing Pg.1 Pathos is used here to tie the reader in and to make them feel more connected to the writer as a person. The author also knows that most people view change as a bad thing. He is changing and it doesnt sound for the better so now we want to know whats been changing his mind so drastically. He then goes to tell another story about Friedrich Nietzsche who in 1882 bought a typewriter which saved his writing but also changed his writing style:
But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsches friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter,

more telegraphic. Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom, the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his thoughts in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper. Pg.3

Again we are drawn in and feel sad, because we feel that part of Friedrich has died with his new use of the typewriter, but Carr had more subtle intentions since it also gets you to think about how the Net or Google is affecting us, since we dont want to end up like the typewriter. But one of the biggest pathos in the article is the very last sentence. Thats the essence of Kubricks dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence. Pg.8 this really sends home the point that computers are making us stupid and we are relying on them too much and no one wants to be a pancake person who doesnt think for themselves and is told what is true and what is false. Ethos is used in the article by taking the views of trusted professionals to help get the point across. People are always are going to trust what a doctor or a professor says and that is how Carr uses ethos.
James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind is very plastic. Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. The brain, according to Olds, has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.

Ethos is used by showing that this information is from a credible source which also makes Carr more credible. This also plays a role in telling people that your brain is constantly changing so the Net could be affecting you. Carr then goes to another source but this was more to show that a big source of news was also changing to the new ways of advertising:

TheNew York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts , its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the shortcuts would give harried readers a quick taste of the days news, sparing them the less efficient method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the newmedia rules.

The New York Times is a big company who most people know so ethos is used to show that this big company is now starting to change, by sending us information just like the Net is. This supports Carrs claim by proving to the reader that the way the world works is changing and it could be a problem. Logos, Pathos, and Ethos are used in Is Google Making Us Stupid to pull the reader in and to explain how our way of thinking has changed with the addition of the Net. Logos is used through reasoning why and what is causing us to change. Pathos is used by connecting the reader through stories that show change. Ethos makes the reader trust what the author is saying and helps get his point across better by using the words of professional people.