Ginger Lee Dingus
Professor M. Lee
October 21, 2015
English 101
Digital Sarcasm
In the article “Google is making you more forgetful. Here’s why that’s a good thing” by Caitlin Dewey there are several different prominent discussions regarding the new ways that humans are recalling and seeking the data that they need. Dewey outlines the points that many authors have and she adds some humor and evidence (Dewey). She says that this is a modern way to manage this basic need and that, as a coping technique, the strategy presently used has been around since the beginning of time. The article was published online in The Washington Post on October 8, 2015. Dewey’s account provides awareness of the digitally inclined and how that is shaping the direction of memorizing and recollection. The author of this article attempts to do this with humor, sarcasm and evidence. Here she is successful, and it falls near the mark of expressing her analysis due to her wry sense of humor. She fails, however, to convey the same theme when she quotes statistics that seem more copied than readable in the flow of her work. The author uses Ethos, Logos and Pathos to convey these messages.
Dewey begins by using Pathos as she uses the word “ominous” in her opening sentence. The word ominous in an opening sentence evokes fear and stands as an attention-getter in an emotional appeal. She is attempting to persuade the reader by using this form of Pathos, a word that should evoke strong emotion. She speaks about an article by Ashley Rodriguez on the website Quartz (Rodriguez) titled “Brain Drain; “Just Googling it” is bad for your brain.” She attempts to paint a picture warning of impending outcomes by quoting statistics that were the basis of the Quartz (Rodriguez) article from a renowned research group in the field of cybersecurity, Kaspersky Lab. The word ominous looms over the name of the research; ““Digital Amnesia” is gradually blotting out our brains.” (Kaspersky Lab) This is an effective way of giving the reader the hook that they need to have in order to want to keep reading the article. Dewey once again ties in to the initial evocation of fear and emotion when she says the word specter in “specter of “digital amnesia.”” Something everyone is doing is “blotting out our brains!” That is worrisome and arouses an emotional response.
It also gives the appearance of being valid and credible because it comes from such a worldwide authority. Plus, it was recently published in more than one legitimate article. Using Logos for the rational tone, she attempts to give the statistics in a very boring, rote way. Dewey uses the second paragraph to blitz her audience with an uncharacteristic display of data. She says “The report surveyed 6,000 adults in six Western European countries” and then goes on to say “as well as 1,000 people in the United States.” She quotes the Europeans that were involved in the study before the Americans that were. Because she is writing for the Washington Post, an American authority, I think she should have gauged this for her intended audience first. She lost my attention here. She used the evidence in a way that is strongly portrayed as being six times as many people that were involved from a European standpoint and not as valid for Americans. Why should I care what Europeans’ habits were before my own?
When she says “Across the board, everybody’s obsessed with their smartphones: More than 40 percent say their phone contains “everything they need to know.”” What she is actually saying is that 40 percent (of six times as many Americans) say that their phones contain all they need to know in order to be successful in their lives in the modern era.
Another example of an argument using Logos in this article appears near the end of the writing in the paragraph quoting the Columbia Law professor Tim Wu’s article in The New Yorker (Wu). Using his article, she supports her written defense of the scenario where there is “a time traveler from the early 1900s encountered a modern-day person with a smartphone…” This is a very visual way of saying that, from our perspective, the modern-day person would just “seem like some chick with a phone.” Just because we have grown up in the age of digital awareness does not make our forefather’s plight any less demanding. She is reminding us that the use of sticky notes and journal entries were the antecedent to search engines like Google, but even those things were new to some generation at one point.
She uses Ethos most strongly in her last paragraph where if, as she states, that the premise of the Kaspersky Research, now four months old, must have outlived its ability to be remembered and thereby, is eligible for forgetting. Yet, obviously, the data isn’t forgotten as she has not only quoted it in her article, but used it substantially as her argument. She does this with a theatrically sarcastic ending which proves her point.
In conclusion, this article uses both fact and fiction in an appealing way to convey the message that we are changing the way we do things, but that it may not be any more different than how we did things in the past. This type of argument is a mixture of what I appreciate the most, because she uses a sense of humor that is sorely lacking in most scientific, data based publications. I only wished she would have stayed true to her audience by keeping her comments more geared to her intended American listeners. Dewey appeals to Logos and common sense when she says “But generally speaking, your brain has only so much space to store memories — rather like your phone. At some point, you have to delete all those old photos and apps to take new ones.” This reads well because it appeals to our sense of rational perception, and that is the way to my literary heart. Works Cited
Dewey, Caitlin. The Intersect: Google is making you more forgetful. Here’s why that’s a good thing. 8 10 2015. Web.
Digital Amnesia. Kaspersky Lab. Kaspersky Lab. 19 6 2015. Web. 19 10 2015.
Rodriguez, Ashley. “Just Googling it” is bad for your brain. 8 10 2015. Web.
Wu, Tim. "If A Time Traveller Saw a Smartphone." 10 1 2014. The New Yorker. Web.