A Rhetorical Analysis Of Bankruptcy

The central message of this text is that if people are not careful with the constant bombardment of electronic stimulation, they will go down a path of eventual knowledge bankruptcy. This bankruptcy will lead to our minds becoming hardwired differently than ever before, and could lead to future generations subsequently being more and more unintelligent.

I would define my position as a sympathetic audience member. With my own position in mind, the kind of audience I think the author is trying to reach are people that are distracted by electronic stimulation. An example to support my answer would be the author’s constant use of ‘we’ throughout the text, referencing internet users and himself. He is making an appeal to all internet users to be aware of the effects of all the electronic stimulation is having on our intellect.
An example of ethos is that the author researched the subject matter and wrote a book about it. He speaks from a point of authority because he has extensive personal experience with how the internet distracts us to the point of knowledge bankruptcy. An example of logos is that the research the author performed showed concrete results that could be substantiated. According to the author, “earlier experiments revealed that as the number of links in an online document goes up, reading comprehension falls, and as more types of information are placed on a screen, we remember less of what we see” (Carr, “How the Internet is making us stupid”). The more stimulation via electronic means we encounter, the more we become distracted, creating a deficit of information