Responses 3A
Carr
Topics: ❧ Pick any one of the categories in 16 Strategies and explain how Carr uses it in his argument. ❧ Take one metaphor and show how it’s central to the point Carr is making. ❧ How do the metaphors Carr uses affect his readers? ❧ Answer any of the questions in red below:
Carr’s Rhetoric
Carr uses historical rhetoric to illustrate the cause and effect of technology on humankind’s ability to solve problems by removing discipline, the need to conceptualize whole thoughts, and ultimately entire tasks. For example, the typewriter, metaphorically, removes the necessity to conceptualize thoughts before applying them to paper and the clock depicts the lack of ability for humans to govern themselves; Therefore, being captive to the concept of time and discipline. Touring’s computer is the final metaphor of how removing whole tasks from individuals has removed whole parts of the thought process resulting in a complete change of culture.
*** This response has a number of good points, yet the expression and ideas need to be more clear and precise. References to history would be better than historical rhetoric, since the latter could be seen as rhetoric from a particular Age, such as Ancient Greece. The first sentence would be more clear with appropriate parallelism: the cause, the need, and the difficulty of completing tasks (if the tasks go with the need, then the sentence has a comma splice; in any case, the sentence is hard to read). The use of metaphorically is awkward, since it’s hard to imagine a metaphor of a necessity of a conceptualization (also, did the typewriter metaphorically remove, or did it simply remove?). Finally, I don’t think Carr is saying, clocks depict the inability to govern ourselves, but rather, clocks change our behaviour by creating a dependance on a more precise level of control.
Carr’s Metaphors
Carr uses nautical metaphors like scuba diving and jet ski to contrast McLuhan's theory into past his personal reading experience to modern days. McLuhan pointed out not only the media can be considered as "the supply chain of media", but it is capable "to change how people understand and process the information". While the traditional way of reading books allowed him to "scuba-dive" as in "focus" into the worlds of knowledge, the emerging new technology lead his mind to lose interest in diving in-depth but rather skim through just like how jet ski skips along the surface of the ocean. (word count: 100)
*** This response is largely observation and needs proofreading: the first sentence suffers from incoherence (into past his personal reading experience to); not only that the media… but also that it is capable of changing; to lose interest in diving in-depth and to instead skim along the surface like a jet-skier.
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Nicholas Carr’s article Is Google Making Us Stupid? discusses the impact of the internet on our intellectual abilities when reading. He compares his life before the internet to “a scuba diver,” illustrating depth to how and what he read; furthermore, Carr likens the texts he read to a “sea of words” which implies length and magnitude. Contrastingly, life after the internet is described as “[zipping] along the surface… on a Jet Ski”, directly opposing the depth of diving and creating a sense of speed and efficiency. With this metaphor, Carr is able to create effective images that clearly contrast and explain his point.
*** This response does a good job of getting at the nautical metaphors, yet it also needs proofreading. The phrase “a scuba driver,” illustrating depth to how and what could be changed to a scuba driver who reads deeply.
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Carr’s use of the metaphor “zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” paints a clear picture for the reader on his position that Google has flattened our intelligence. The sheer speed of that machine on the water’s surface misses all the underwater, sensory richness experienced through the slower, more immersive pace of scuba diving by comparison. Instead of celebrating the ‘power reading - power browsing’ mentality Google has instilled in us, Carr longs for the days of deep concentration, contemplation, and learning when he was a scuba diver immersed in the sea of words. (98 words)
*** This response is much better. It gets at the same ideas but uses words which suggest the richness and depth Carr says comes from deep reading. While the student could have omitted by comparison from the end of the second sentence, the response is very smoothly and powerfully written.
Carr’s Use of 2001: A Space Odyssey
A merciless doom, memory circuits being plucked one by one in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This chilling scene is used to frame the argument that our minds are slowly being disconnected from each search on the net. The reliance on artificial intelligence has created a downfall of instinctual thought processing in humans. Carr uses fearsome references to 2001: A Space Odyssey to mark the trade-off of brain nerves for artificial intelligence. (71 words)
*** This response is a bit cryptic and brief, yet fairly good. I’d correct the expression as follows (with changes in bold):
At the start of Carr’s article, readers are confronted with a merciless doom from the well-known film, 2001: A Space Odyssey: memory circuits are being plucked one by one from a ‘very human’ computer. This chilling scene is used to frame the argument that our minds are slowly being disconnected with each search we make on the net. The reliance on artificial intelligence has created a downfall of instinctual thought processing in humans. Carr uses fearsome references to 2001: A Space Odyssey to mark the trade-off of brain nerves for artificial intelligence. (71 words)
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2001: A Space Odyssey initiates Carr’s argument deconstructing the human relationship with technology. Carr empathizes with the machine HAL “I can feel it,” the feeling of his mind changing due to the reliance on technology. Human reliance on technology has been gradual. Thought moved to paper and pen, to a press, then a typewriter, to film, then computer and Internet. Our relationship is ever changing. Carr upon concluding proposes perhaps like 2001 technology has changed human to become more machine. HAL a machine held emotion upon its deconstruction, as humans our mental deconstruction is emotionless forfeited to technology. (98 words)
*** This response has many good points and gets at Carr’s main concerns about technological change and human behaviour. Unfortunately, however, the response also has many awkward and ungrammatical parts. I’ll rewrite it, putting corrections in bold. I’ve kept the word deconstruction, even though fragmentation or dismantling might be better (deconstruction tends to be an academic term relating to a French school of linguistics), and I’ve altered somewhat the sense of the first sentence.
2001: A Space Odyssey initiates Carr’s argument about the mental deconstruction brought about by technology. In using HAL’s words “I can feel it,” Carr empathizes how the mind changes due to reliance on technology. This has been gradual and ever-changing: thought was first expressed with pen and paper, then with printing press, typewriter, film, and finally with computers and the Internet. Carr concludes by referring to how in 2001 humans become less emotional than machines: HAL is a machine, yet ‘he’ expresses more emotion than the man dismantling him. This underscores how our psychological depth is being forfeited to technology. (100 words)
Carr Applied Elsewhere
Carr references the arrival of the printing press and resulting worry it would “demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery.” This same lens can be applied to the proliferation of the use of the internet and the ease with which any person or organization can contribute to its content by the dissemination of propaganda masquerading as fact. Research articles are no longer the sole domain of academics; peer review and reproducibility are fast becoming less important. News articles are no longer written by journalists edified on the ideal of journalistic objectivity. Increasingly, only clicks count.
*** This response starts and ends strongly, and makes an insightful connection between a past worry about the printing press and a present worry about misinformation. The writing is clear and coherent (apart from the use of reproducibility), and pushes the reader to think about difficult and debatable topics. There’s only one slight thing I’d like to note: sedition and debauchery are fundamentally different from misinformation and unscholarly writing. “Sedition” against unelected past governments may be seen today as a democratic move; likewise “debauchery” is an outdated word and is generally seen as referring to things like sex, drinking, partying, homosexuality, etc., many of which are now considered acceptable, at least in Canada. It’s a bit difficult to see how these things that have gradually been accepted are similar to propaganda or a lack of objectivity, which one could argue should never be accepted. But the interesting thing (at least to me) about this responses is it makes us ask, Can technology turn the unacceptable into the acceptable, despite our best intellectual or moral intentions?