What I Want in Each Body Paragraph (From Prompt #3)

What I Want in Each Body Paragraph (From Prompt #3)

a textual example (appropriate quote), in order to analyze and evaluate

 how the appeal and strategy work together,

 why Carr specifically uses this strategy to make his appeal,

 what the strategy’s effect is on his intended audience, and

how it supports the central claim.

 Finally, assess how effectively Carr uses this strategy, evaluating how the example successfully incorporates more than one appeal or how it might be less effective for different audiences. This is your chance to highlight the weaknesses or strengths in Carr’s argument (linking the analysis back to your own evaluative thesis).

Immediately, Carr launches into his argument quoting from the potent scene near the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey when Dave is trying to disconnect HAL, the space computer that has recently murdered his fellow astronauts in an attempt to safe guard what the machine views as the original goals of the mission. Carr draws the reader’s attention to the contrasting emotions of Dave and HAL; HAL is begging for his life, while Dave is “Calmly, Coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain” (Carr 1). Carr uses the scene as an analogy to show how technology is changing people to their very core, specifically affecting how their brains function. In fact, the scene is so representative of many of the complexities that Carr is struggling with in his article that he chooses to use it to frame the entire text, concluding his argument in agreement with what he identifies as “Kubrick’s dark prophecy [that] as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence” (7). The analogy creates an obvious appeal to pathos because it deals specifically with the emotional characteristics of the characters being addressed. Emotionally loaded words like “plead,” “calmly, coldly,” “despair,” and “childlike pleading” are prevalent in both the first and final paragraph of the piece. This framing technique is highly effective as it leads the reader into the author’s personal anecdotes and the various historical and scientific examples that work to establish his credibility in the following paragraphs.

Furthermore, the 1968 film creates a dramatic, but also nostalgic connection with his readers, most likely an older and educated demographic wary of the enormous changes in technology over the past two decades. Carr uses the framing scene of HAL and Dave to build off of an anxiety of change, but his choice of films is in many ways more to the point than he is throughout the remaining sections of the argument. The framing analogy is marked by a distinctive lack of conditionality present throughout most of Carr’s article, perhaps because the author is discussing his reaction to another man’s vision. In the guise of analogy, Carr seems to be able to drive home some his more visceral opinions of how technology is changing society overall. The robots we create are going to kill us. The analogy introduces some of the key aspects of Carr’s argument, but overall is more broad and artistic than the remaining sections of the article. Ultimately, this technique strengthens Carr’s argument, although it may not necessarily add specificity to his central claim, or make up for the weaknesses in other areas of his writing.