Analysis Of 'Is Google Making USupid?'

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?”: An Article Analysis

In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (2008), 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 his argument, Carr draws on personal and historical anecdotes and one study. By writing this article, Carr aims to open a dialogue about the potentially adverse effects the Internet could have on peoples’ cognitive processes. Carr establishes an informal relationship with the audience, which is primarily composed of well-educated individuals. Because this audience is educated, they are capable of critical thinking. However, because they are humans they are easily

disarmed by other rhetorical appeals that make it easy to overlook the article’s logical issues. His essay is rife with unfounded premises and logical fallacies. Nevertheless, because this dearth of logos is in a way compensated for by including numerous appeals to ethos and pathos, the audience is likely to find the article persuasive unless they read it with a critical lens.
Carr bases his thesis on two primary premises: first, the population’s inability to read long texts can be attributed to the emergence of the Net and second, because the Web supplies the “stuff of thought,” it shapes the brain’s thought processes (2).

However, the primary issue with his essay is that both premises are either backed up by weak or irrelevant evidence or lack proper evidence all together. This faulty logic threatens the article’s logical soundness. An argument that properly appeals to logos has strong reasoning, avoids logical fallacies, and cites reputable sources. Carr’s article fails on all these

fronts.
Carr’s first premise is that there has been a decline in the populace’s ability to read long texts due to the advent of the Internet. The pieces of evidence that Carr uses to support this premise – personal and blogger anecdotes – commit the post hoc fallacy and therefore detract from the article’s logical soundness. Both Carr and bloggers he cited noticed that their focus declined roughly in lockstep with the Web’s advent (2-3). The authors then asserted that because the Web’s introduction preceded their decline in focus, the Internet was necessarily the culprit. The authors did not examine any alternative causes, which makes this assertion a post hoc fallacy. Using a logical fallacy when supporting one of the argument’s two premises severely undermines its validity.
Another threat to logos is the methodologically unsound study Carr cited (3-4). 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 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. Because this sample is not representative of the population the results cannot be generalized to the broader population, which Carr did. Because the only study Carr cited was a methodologically unsound one, it is evident that the essay lacks logos. Therefore, the first premise cannot stand from a logical standpoint.
Carr’s second premise is that information transfer methods mold an individual’s cognitive processes. Carr attempts to prove this premise by referring to “experiments” (with no citations) that found that individuals who learned to read ideograms had different neural pathways than those who learned to read alphabet writing (3). The issue is that Carr generalizes the study’s findings to the shift from paper to the Internet, arguing that because ideogram readers and alphabet readers think differently, so should paper and Net readers. This application of the study’s findings constitutes a false analogy. The results cannot be generalized in that fashion because the two situations Carr drew an analogy between are fundamentally different and therefore incompatible: individuals who shift from paper to the Web are still reading the same writing system. Only the medium changes. Because the study examines the effects changing the writing system has on cognition, an analogy cannot be drawn between them. Therefore, that piece of evidence cannot stand and weakens the second premise.
Carr’s use of Alan Turning’s work to support the second premise also constitutes a logical fallacy.

To introduce Turning’s research, Carr claimed that the internet will have “…far-reaching effects on cognition.” (7) Carr then explained how Turning’s studies suggested the possibility of a multifunctional Web. However, a versatile Internet is unrelated to changing cognition. This mismatch between Carr’s claim and the evidence presented therefore makes it a non-sequitur because it does not follow that a multifunctional Web will produce cognitive changes. As mentioned previously, using a logical fallacy to support a premise detracts from the argument’s

logos.
Carr’s failure to adequately address and refute potential counterarguments further undermines the essay’s logical soundness. The two historical backlashes against technology (the anti-writing and anti-printing press forces), Carr mentioned, were ultimately wrong in the long-run. However, his rebuttal was that the Net is “…something altogether different.” (Carr 8) This rebuttal is weak. It employs circular logic as no new evidence is brought forth and therefore leaves the reader to trust what Carr deems is “different” and what is not (8). Had Carr provided empirical evidence that proved that Internet revolution is indeed different than the historical revolutions he mentioned earlier, then it would not be circular logic. However, just stating the same thing as the claim is a fallacy and therefore weakens his thesis.
Carr’s numerous logical fallacies and scant pieces of evidence ultimately undermine his premises and therefore his thesis. However, Carr makes up for this dearth of logos by employing a multitude of other rhetorical appeals that effectively distract the reader. While the target audience – educated individuals – might initially buy into the argument because of those other appeals, if they approach the article from a critical standpoint, they are unlikely to be persuaded. Therefore, only the individuals who are disarmed by the appeals to pathos and ethos will be convinced.