Main Argument:
The rampant misuse of the terms “digital native” and “digital immigrant” are woefully biased, lamentably useless, and grievously precarious.
Claims and Sub-claims:
These terms are used and known (mostly) by only one side of the discussion.
These terms are not useful.
-They are too generalized.
-They are insensitive.
It is dangerous to assume that these terms are accurate.
-Digital education cannot be ignored.
-Categorization in general is problematic.
Why has technology permeated every industry?
How does the perception of no biases of computers make human biases more dangerous?
How do inequalities in real life translate to inequalities on the internet?
In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr states, similar to Clive Thompson, that the Internet is changing the way humans think. Unlike Thompson, however, Carr argues that this change is a negative, deteriorative one. Ironically published on the Internet for the Atlantic, Carr’s audience seems majorly to be older, educated white people. The text, published back in 2008, is distractingly outdated, using phrases like “the Net” and references to a movie that was already forty years old when he wrote the article.
Carr attempts to qualify himself in the third paragraph by describing himself as an avid internet user. After introducing his situation, he says “For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the internet.” He makes himself out as an expert in all things internet, an appeal to ethos, and to his intended audience, this may be effective. Ten years is a long time to do anything, and older people are fascinated and confused by the internet. However, to anyone born after the creation of the internet, this is nothing. Their whole lives have revolved around the internet for as long as they can remember.
One of the most vivid images Carr creates, at the end of the fourth paragraph, is achieved through a metaphor: “Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” Much is accomplished through this, but the main point is to show the audience how Carr feels. This feeling may resonate with some of Carr’s audience, and they may agree wholeheartedly. In this case, Carr’s appeal to pathos does its job. However, I feel that this metaphor serves to polarize his audience more than anything. While it effectively shows how Carr himself feels, if they audience does not experience this, then they are alienated by the text and are much more skeptical of all of the other points Carr tries to make. (Side note: I also question his use of the jet ski in his metaphor when there is a perfectly good surfing metaphor already in place. I just think it would be more impactful to use a well-known term. Anyway, back to the assignment.)
In paragraph seven, Carr references a study by University College London in which “they found that people using the sites [one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium] exhibited ‘a form of skimming activity,’ hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited.” This serves Carr purpose very well. People seem just to be forgetting what they had learned from previous sources (if they have indeed read enough to learn anything at all), discarding them, and going to the next source, just to forget that one too and repeat the process. This study is particularly effective as it is the first he provides. Until this point in the article, Carr had simply been using anecdotes as a means of evidence. But anecdotes alone don’t prove much, so he goes into the study as an appeal to logos.
The Aristotelian appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos can be powerful rhetorical tools in the right hands. Dannon, mostly known as a yogurt company, employs them on their website (http://www.dannon.com/), yielding interesting results.
There is one main appeal to ethos on the webpage: a huge pink bar for breast cancer awareness. “SEE HOW DANNON IS HELPING FIGHT BREAST CANCER” it proclaims. This serves not only as a ploy to draw in the potential customer but also as a gesture of good will. The company wants to appear morally just and likeable. They also intend the audience to take them seriously in their ethics and their product. If they fight breast cancer, they must be good and honest about their product, right?
Similarly, there is one main appeal pathos on the website: appealing pictures of the product. It appears next to fresh strawberries. This serves two purposes. First, it gets the audience’s mouth watering, ready to eat their fill of strawberries in the product. This brings me to the second purpose. This implies they put actual, real strawberries in their product. They never state this on the site, but the audience may assume it because of the delicious looking picture.
Finally, the site rounds everything out with their appeals to logos. They claim “All natural ingredients with Vitamin D, non GMO ingredients*, made with whole milk.” This is intended to provoke some rational thought in the audience. The company lists off phrases that sound smart and healthy, but offer no real promises. The effect of this is varied, especially when the audiences sees that massive asterisk after the non GMO ingredients claim. Even if the asterisk has a good explanation for being there, many potential customers may see it and turn away, just because of its presence.
The website itself is fairly balanced in its use of Aristotelian appeals. If anything is slightly lacking, it is pathos, a surprise to be sure. One may expect many appeals to pathos, as emotions are often stronger motivators that logic. However, the extra appeal to logos balances it out succinctly.
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