Mind Over Mass Media

As time has passed the evolution of technology is almost indescribable. Technology has become apart of our everyday lives. When you think of technology you mostly think about how it has helped advance our lives, but may never consider its negatives. The media is a huge aspect of how we shape our society. In the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman he shows his concern for how this all can effect as as a people. He does this by using three popular persuasive literary devices to help convey his message to the reader. The three devices being: Pathos, Logos and Ethos. All of these are used many times throughout the book,with their own effects. Logos, is the appeal to logic. When using this device you are using logical reasoning to help appeal to the reader.This also includes pulling facts, statics and citing other credible sources to use. The next one is Ethos, which is showing that the author is a credible source, and is well aware of what he is talking about. Lastly is Pathos, this is when you appeal to one's emotion to get their attention. In this book Postman does a very good job of using all of these devices.

Have you ever wondered how how much our life have changed since technology modernized? Technology has advanced so much that it is present everywhere in our lives and there is almost no place on the globe where this important trend of the last two centuries has not entered. Technology has taken control of the world. This situation leads to the decline of the society, including human’s ability to think. The book “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury provides the interaction of the protagonist, Guy Montag, in a particular way with the technology. Guy Montag is a fireman whose job is to to burn books. Fahrenheit 451 presents a world where, under the motto, “...the books says nothing” (Bradbury 51-63), people start burning them and bookless happiness is illustrated by the empty streets of the city, people could not detach for a moment from the screens that give the images of a perfect world. The science fiction film “Wall-E” (2008) is the story of the last robot on Earth, whose job is to clean up the trash left by hymans. Meanwhile, the planet had to leave the planet. As a consequence, the robots take the control of it. So, technology changes the ways in which people interact with each other that does not move humanity forward.

As time goes on our technology is advancing and slowly starting to control how humans are acting and taking over jobs, human interactions, and how people use their time. In the novel readers see how Bradbury uses technology to show how it takes over people and how they think or feel about themselves and others. Ebooks, social media networks, automatic cleaning tools, and robots are just a few items that have been created to make life a lot simpler and less work for humans. Today in society people choose not to use critical thinking but instead are using technology to replace what they're supposed to do for themselves. People are using technology to replace books and everything else they're doing.

Pinker expresses his values between the lines of his argument. Intelligence is the most stated value of his when he defends technologies as “the only things that will keep us smart” (Pinker). Science and education also come under the umbrella of his intelligence as a value, providing a measurement of his argument in an effective, meaningful way. “If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of scientific discipline would be plummeting” (Pinker), which indicates that we need technology to continue making scientific discoveries, as it is the primary tool employed in most of them. To arrive at this intelligence, we must value education, which we gain by attending college and through practicing skills

The main issue is the debate over what his point actually is on this topic, and, therefore, he succeeds in educating his audience on the topic. Instead of telling them what he believes and influencing their perspectives, he provides them with the information needed to form their own opinions. The title of the article is "Is Google Making Us Stupid"; the title is not "Google Is Making Us Stupid." By phrasing the title in a question, it leaves the audience to answer the question. Carr's job in this article is to inform readers, not make decisions for them. He merely provides both sides of the argument and allows them to take what they are given and formulate their beliefs. By arguing for both sides, he easily appeals to all kinds of people reading his

In the articles “Alone in the Crowd” and “As technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse?,” Michael Price and Tim Wu, respectively acknowledge the effects of technological advances. While both Price and Wu use effective rhetorical strategies in their articles, one presents their argument in a more persuasive manner. Wu effectively convinces his audience that as a society we continue to advance technologically, but for the wrong reasons. Price references an interview with Sherry Turkle, to convey his opinion that the social media frenzy consumes our society. Price and Wu both present their point of view, but Wu has more factual information to justify his argument. The appeal to emotion is stronger in Price’s article; however, in this situation Wu’s logos appeal is more rhetorically effective. Beyond Ethos, Pathos, and

Does the internet affect the way people think? This is the question Nicholas Carr answers in his essay, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr writes about the negative aspects of relying on an outside source for information in order to argue that Google could be making us less intelligent. Carr’s general audience is anyone with access to the internet because he believes most people with access to the internet usually abuse it. Because the internet supplies a large quantity of information, people are less likely to learn for themselves.

One of the most interesting uses of the appeals in Gopnik’s article is the use of ethos. She uses ethos to not only strengthen her own argument, but to strengthen that of her opposition. Gopnik’s view on digital technology differs from that of Sherry Turkle’s, who believes that the Web will have a profound negative effect on human psychology. Gopnik uses ethos to enhance Sherry Turkle’s reputation by mentioning her new book, Alone Together, and states that Turkle has been observing the impact of the digital revolution for 20 years. Gopnik also mentions that Turkle does her job of ethnographic well. All these appeals to ethos make Turkle appear like a highly reputable source which in turn helps Gopnik’s argument. It shows that the author is

In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, technology plays a major role in the society. Their society is so influenced by technology that they simply cannot function without it. They aren’t capable of thinking on their own because they rely so heavily on technology to think for them. Bradbury’s prediction was correct. The world is so reliant on their technology that students can’t leave their phones at home for one day without being behind on an assignment or two. Technology plays a crucial role in American society today in economic and social ways. It allows society to easily communicate with people all around the world with just one click of a button. Therefore, technology is a good thing when used in the Virtually all businesses today use some form of technology to more efficiently produce their services or products. Even social networks have been created to allow people to post events in their lives and talk to others online. Texting permits people to communicate without out actually talking to each other. Although, these enhancements in technology allow for quicker and easier forms of communication, society is also becoming much less social as a result. increase In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury argues that the development of technology is “dumbing down” people in the Utopian society, ultimately warping the perfect world into a dystopian society. Ray

I would say most of the evidence is one-sided however the solutions provided at the end make it less one sided. Rather than saying to eliminate technology the author says to compromise and take dedicate time and places to just set it aside for a while to have real conversation.

However, the difference between the two is that one of them realizes it while the other is already accustomed to it. Nicholas Carr is a writer for the Atlantic national magazine. He has personally felt the effects of technology on his writing and says, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (Source 4). Before the advancement of technology many writers and students would immerse themselves in books to understand on a deeper level the topic. However, now people are browsing the topic without understanding what they are really researching. In source 8, a boy is surrounded by books and he is on his computer. He has access to all that knowledge and he chooses to use his laptop to scan through some article instead of perusing a book for meaning. This is an actual representation of my generation’s culture and lack of intelligence to use all the resources available to you.

These two authors do not necessarily have much in common on the surface but just below when one can ascertain the message being put out by each author it is clearly connected in the form of technology, its historical and current uses and how the advent of easy communication technology has allowed us to water down our vast culture by making it easy to objectify humans, animals and nature if the explanation is sensational enough. I’ve learned through reading Neil Postman’s book(1985), Amusing Ourselves to Death, that we seem to look at forms of communication as following a linear path. The invention of easy communication created a niche in societies that became a place for further discourse, sharing of ideas and knowledge, but in the end, was used ultimately to control, shape and form the masses. Neil Postman delved into topics that I think are somewhat forgotten by history and societies as they become so engrained in our way of viewing the world around us. Jean Kilbourne (1999) taught me that we are all subjected to societal gender normalization through mass media, print media and news programs. The sheer lack of honest and open communication in our society puts us at risk for being objectified, sexualized and demoralized, all without realizing that this is

The difference in opinion comes when technology is proposed as a helpful or a harmful thing amongst humans. Pinker’s view is strongly in favor of technology: “Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart” (Pinker). He believes that technology is not making us stupid, but rather smart. As a person that is for technology, Pinker agrees with it being the approach taken to help us increase our knowledge more

Throughout history and evolution of mankind, there have been many discoveries and they have advanced our lives in a way we could never have phantom. Pinker backs up his thesis by providing logical evidence from a variety of sources. He points out that crime rates dropped when people thought comic books would cause the opposite; IQ’s went up when television, transistor radios and rock videos were supposed to cause the opposite; electronic media was supposed to poison our minds, however, discoveries are on the rise at a rate no one can keep up to. Social media is a power horse that causes people to be drawn in whether they want to or not, however one must have the power to limit themselves to the quality not the

Argument toward certain topics began because the bias found in the mass media. According to University Wire, “[the media is the main reason why we’re]politically divided because the fundamental flaw in our mass media system is that we have two sides.” What two sides are we talking about? We’re talking about the democrats and republicans or in other words, liberal and conservative sides. Liberals are those who believe in changes and conservative are those who believe in traditional values. What is responsible for causing the nation to fall apart? Mass media. The three powerhouse in media are Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, they tend to be bias in their news reports. When the media give biased news, certain viewers tend to go along with what the