Technology, some might consider it to be beneficial to our society while others believe it is destroying it. “Public Thinking”written by Clive Thompson, a Canadian freelance journalist, blogger and science and technology writer, talks about how technology has changed the way we read, write, and think for the better. Thompson’s aim in writing this text is to inform his audience about the benefits technology has brought us. Additionally, he claims that writing for an audience can also help improve the way a person writes. In order for Thompson’s claims to be accepted as true he provides evidence to show how technology has actually made a large amount of people better writers and he supports his argument by using ethos as a rhetorical strategy. In this paper I will explore Thompson’s strategic use of evidence and ethos that he uses to inform his audience about the benefits technology has had on the way we write.
In “Public Thinking” Thompson discusses how not many people in the United States are pushed to become better writers. Clive Thompson himself writes, “Literacy in North America had historically been focused on reading, not writing; consumption, not production…The advent of digital communications…,has upended that notion.” (Smarter Than You Think 50) Basically, Thompson is saying that in the past people have been encouraged to read a lot but not to write as much but luckily advancements in technology such as social media has changed this. Thompson
uses historical comparisons to point out the differences between what people encouraged to do in the the 1980’s and 90’s to what they are pushed to do now.
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