The Shallows
Professor Provost
RPW 210
27 October 2011
The Shallows; Real or Make Believe The Internet is something that some consider their lifesavers, while others believe that it takes their life away. The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr is a novel that explores the different areas of how new technologies affect humans in different ways, regarding multi-tasking and distractions, to how new technologies make us lose a little part of ourselves. Throughout the book Carr puts forward very strong arguments, but then loses creditability with his use of fallacies in argument.
Within the very first chapter “Hal and Me”, is where the first fallacy arises. “Hal and Me”, gives the reader some insight of what they can be expecting from reading the book. This chapter basically discusses how some people do not have patience to read books fully and they either use the Internet or just skim through books. A quote in this chapter that supports Carr’s argument is “ I don’t read books,” says Joe O’Shea, a former president of the student body at Florida State University and a 2008 recipient of a Rhodes scholarship. “I go to Google, and I can absorb relevant information quickly… Sitting down and going through a book from cover to cover doesn’t make sense,” he says. “Its not a good use of my time, as I can get all the information I need faster through the Web” (Carr 8). There is no doubt about it that this quote is true, and does provide a good source to the reader, but just showing one college student doesn’t do much justice to the argument and provides some misinformation. If there were another quote that went along the same lines as this, the argument would be much stronger. A few paragraphs down on page 8 there is a quote along the same lines but it is from a teacher’s perspective, not a student. So the argument of how students don’t read books and just use there Internet isn’t as strong.
Chapter 3 “Tools of the Mind”, also includes some
RPW 210
27 October 2011
The Shallows; Real or Make Believe The Internet is something that some consider their lifesavers, while others believe that it takes their life away. The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr is a novel that explores the different areas of how new technologies affect humans in different ways, regarding multi-tasking and distractions, to how new technologies make us lose a little part of ourselves. Throughout the book Carr puts forward very strong arguments, but then loses creditability with his use of fallacies in argument.
Within the very first chapter “Hal and Me”, is where the first fallacy arises. “Hal and Me”, gives the reader some insight of what they can be expecting from reading the book. This chapter basically discusses how some people do not have patience to read books fully and they either use the Internet or just skim through books. A quote in this chapter that supports Carr’s argument is “ I don’t read books,” says Joe O’Shea, a former president of the student body at Florida State University and a 2008 recipient of a Rhodes scholarship. “I go to Google, and I can absorb relevant information quickly… Sitting down and going through a book from cover to cover doesn’t make sense,” he says. “Its not a good use of my time, as I can get all the information I need faster through the Web” (Carr 8). There is no doubt about it that this quote is true, and does provide a good source to the reader, but just showing one college student doesn’t do much justice to the argument and provides some misinformation. If there were another quote that went along the same lines as this, the argument would be much stronger. A few paragraphs down on page 8 there is a quote along the same lines but it is from a teacher’s perspective, not a student. So the argument of how students don’t read books and just use there Internet isn’t as strong.
Chapter 3 “Tools of the Mind”, also includes some
Cited: Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print