Final Thompson Essay

Analytical Response to Thompson’s “Public Thinking”

            Clive Thompson, author of “Public Thinking” has been a long time writer for the New York Times newspaper, and rightfully so. His diction exemplifies tremendous passion in his writing. One of his most famous works in which he demonstrates this is “Public Thinking”. In his earlier years, Thompson viewed the Internet and social media as an increasing downfall to society. To his surprise, he began to see only good coming from this launch into a new technological era. People were writing in large amounts like no one has ever seen before, not to mention the quality of writing had also taken a turn for the best as described in his work. These are just two of the positive attributes Thompson sees in public thinking. His purpose for writing this essay is to demonstrate to the public a number of ways that writing online is actually increasing our literacy. He expresses himself so deeply, due to the fact that this topic is very controversial and people usually tend to lean more toward technology and online writing becoming a detrimental thing to our society. Thompson uses a number of different kinds of evidence to inform the reader every reason as to why this is a common misconception. In my analytical response to Thompson’s text, I will examine the different techniques he uses in his evidence to show just how effectively he explains and supports every piece of evidence he provides the reader.

            Although Americans today tend to believe that the increasing use of the internet and other forms of technology has a negative effect on society as a whole, there are three main forms of evidence that are properly executed in order to support Thompson’s case that those Americans are in fact, wrong. An experimental study done by Stanford professor Brenna Clarke Gray illustrates the audience effect on her students by assigning them to create a Wikipedia entry on Canadian writers. After her study, Gray shared that her students did significantly better on this assignment than the others, primarily because they took it more seriously. She states, “It was like night and day” (56). She uses night and day as opposites in order to show the pathos to her study and to instill within the reader just how successful and persuasive this study was. The fact that the idea of online prose is such an abundant way of writing to one’s potential as to use it in an academic study goes to show that this discovery is far from myth. However, to every study is a little error. In the case of this example, it would have benefitted the reader vastly if this analysis were to have been replicated on individuals in the middle school age to see if maturity has a factor on the results.

In addition to this study, Thompson uses a historical occurrence to support the idea that the way we think is a product of our environment. “If four astronomers discovered sunspots at the same time, it’s partly because of the quality of lenses in telescopes in 1611 had matured to the point where it was finally possible to pick out small details on the sun and partly because the question of the sun’s role in the universe had become newly interesting in the wake of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory” (Thompson 59). This directly ties into present-day Americans and the development of the Internet as a place where we can freely express ourselves through our individual and original writing. If the people who surround us are writing more due to the accessibility and convenience of the Internet, we will follow the crowd due to our human nature of being “pack animals”. However, the increase in popularity may lead to more competition such as: “Who always has a really well-written Facebook status” or even, “Who has the cleverest captions to the pictures on Instagram?” these rhetorical questions are just two examples in which Americans have found themselves to ask while surfing through social media sites and directly correlates to the increase in human cognition. This is evident in human nature to always be “on top” and have a competitive “alpha” mentality. This claim of Thompson’s is quite effective as he brings a new element into his evidence by adding an example from history. He proves that this is the way human behavior has worked for centuries and there is no reason why now is the time when that comes to an end. One of Thompson’s concluding points includes a personal anecdote on Ernest Duchesne and his original discovery of penicillin. Due to the fact that Duchesne was young and not very well known, his writings of the discovery weren’t noticed. It took 47 years, and millions of people dead from diseases, for its rediscovery by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming to finally be accepted by the public. “Failed networks kill ideas” (Thompson 61). This was the perfect thing for Thompson to say in his work because it truly adds another element of pathos. Pathos is an important component in successful writing today because the reader is given the opportunity to understand in more of a personal manner. This writing technique is becoming more popular because Americans are starting to understand what grabs the reader’s attention and allows for the author to be easily noticed. If Duchesne and Fleming had the same connections we do today, millions of innocent lives would have been saved.

Analytical Response to Thompson’s “Public Thinking”

            Clive Thompson, author of “Public Thinking” has been a long time writer for the New York Times newspaper, and rightfully so. His diction exemplifies tremendous passion in his writing. One of his most famous works in which he demonstrates this is “Public Thinking”. In his earlier years, Thompson viewed the Internet and social media as an increasing downfall to society. To his surprise, he began to see only good coming from this launch into a new technological era. People were writing in large amounts like no one has ever seen before, not to mention the quality of writing had also taken a turn for the best as described in his work. These are just two of the positive attributes Thompson sees in public thinking. His purpose for writing this essay is to demonstrate to the public a number of ways that writing online is actually increasing our literacy. He expresses himself so deeply, due to the fact that this topic is very controversial and people usually tend to lean more toward technology and online writing becoming a detrimental thing to our society. Thompson uses a number of different kinds of evidence to inform the reader every reason as to why this is a common misconception. In my analytical response to Thompson’s text, I will examine the different techniques he uses in his evidence to show just how effectively he explains and supports every piece of evidence he provides the reader.

            Although Americans today tend to believe that the increasing use of the internet and other forms of technology has a negative effect on society as a whole, there are three main forms of evidence that are properly executed in order to support Thompson’s case that those Americans are in fact, wrong. An experimental study done by Stanford professor Brenna Clarke Gray illustrates the audience effect on her students by assigning them to create a Wikipedia entry on Canadian writers. After her study, Gray shared that her students did significantly better on this assignment than the others, primarily because they took it more seriously. She states, “It was like night and day” (56). She uses night and day as opposites in order to show the pathos to her study and to instill within the reader just how successful and persuasive this study was. The fact that the idea of online prose is such an abundant way of writing to one’s potential as to use it in an academic study goes to show that this discovery is far from myth. However, to every study is a little error. In the case of this example, it would have benefitted the reader vastly if this analysis were to have been replicated on individuals in the middle school age to see if maturity has a factor on the results.

In addition to this study, Thompson uses a historical occurrence to support the idea that the way we think is a product of our environment. “If four astronomers discovered sunspots at the same time, it’s partly because of the quality of lenses in telescopes in 1611 had matured to the point where it was finally possible to pick out small details on the sun and partly because the question of the sun’s role in the universe had become newly interesting in the wake of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory” (Thompson 59). This directly ties into present-day Americans and the development of the Internet as a place where we can freely express ourselves through our individual and original writing. If the people who surround us are writing more due to the accessibility and convenience of the Internet, we will follow the crowd due to our human nature of being “pack animals”. However, the increase in popularity may lead to more competition such as: “Who always has a really well-written Facebook status” or even, “Who has the cleverest captions to the pictures on Instagram?” these rhetorical questions are just two examples in which Americans have found themselves to ask while surfing through social media sites and directly correlates to the increase in human cognition. This is evident in human nature to always be “on top” and have a competitive “alpha” mentality. This claim of Thompson’s is quite effective as he brings a new element into his evidence by adding an example from history. He proves that this is the way human behavior has worked for centuries and there is no reason why now is the time when that comes to an end. One of Thompson’s concluding points includes a personal anecdote on Ernest Duchesne and his original discovery of penicillin. Due to the fact that Duchesne was young and not very well known, his writings of the discovery weren’t noticed. It took 47 years, and millions of people dead from diseases, for its rediscovery by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming to finally be accepted by the public. “Failed networks kill ideas” (Thompson 61). This was the perfect thing for Thompson to say in his work because it truly adds another element of pathos. Pathos is an important component in successful writing today because the reader is given the opportunity to understand in more of a personal manner. This writing technique is becoming more popular because Americans are starting to understand what grabs the reader’s attention and allows for the author to be easily noticed. If Duchesne and Fleming had the same connections we do today, millions of innocent lives would have been saved.

            To wrap it all up, it is clear that Thompson was able to connect to the reader through his various writing styles and types of evidence. I have portrayed in this paper, his exemplary use of just three of his main claims: an account from history, experimental study, and lastly, a personal anecdote. His argument is very relevant which is another main reason why so many people are interested in what he has to say. It has been a common misunderstanding in the past that technology was actually the antagonist of a developing society and used as a crutch for lazy writing. But through his writing, people began to listen; for what he had to say instilled a new thought in the minds of people whom technology greatly affects. The Internet “encourages public thinking and resolves multiples on a much larger scale and at a pace more dementedly rapid” (Thompson 61).

Analytical Response to Thompson’s “Public Thinking”

            Clive Thompson, author of “Public Thinking” has been a long time writer for the New York Times newspaper, and rightfully so. His diction exemplifies tremendous passion in his writing. One of his most famous works in which he demonstrates this is “Public Thinking”. In his earlier years, Thompson viewed the Internet and social media as an increasing downfall to society. To his surprise, he began to see only good coming from this launch into a new technological era. People were writing in large amounts like no one has ever seen before, not to mention the quality of writing had also taken a turn for the best as described in his work. These are just two of the positive attributes Thompson sees in public thinking. His purpose for writing this essay is to demonstrate to the public a number of ways that writing online is actually increasing our literacy. He expresses himself so deeply, due to the fact that this topic is very controversial and people usually tend to lean more toward technology and online writing becoming a detrimental thing to our society. Thompson uses a number of different kinds of evidence to inform the reader every reason as to why this is a common misconception. In my analytical response to Thompson’s text, I will examine the different techniques he uses in his evidence to show just how effectively he explains and supports every piece of evidence he provides the reader.

            Although Americans today tend to believe that the increasing use of the internet and other forms of technology has a negative effect on society as a whole, there are three main forms of evidence that are properly executed in order to support Thompson’s case that those Americans are in fact, wrong. An experimental study done by Stanford professor Brenna Clarke Gray illustrates the audience effect on her students by assigning them to create a Wikipedia entry on Canadian writers. After her study, Gray shared that her students did significantly better on this assignment than the others, primarily because they took it more seriously. She states, “It was like night and day” (56). She uses night and day as opposites in order to show the pathos to her study and to instill within the reader just how successful and persuasive this study was. The fact that the idea of online prose is such an abundant way of writing to one’s potential as to use it in an academic study goes to show that this discovery is far from myth. However, to every study is a little error. In the case of this example, it would have benefitted the reader vastly if this analysis were to have been replicated on individuals in the middle school age to see if maturity has a factor on the results.

In addition to this study, Thompson uses a historical occurrence to support the idea that the way we think is a product of our environment. “If four astronomers discovered sunspots at the same time, it’s partly because of the quality of lenses in telescopes in 1611 had matured to the point where it was finally possible to pick out small details on the sun and partly because the question of the sun’s role in the universe had become newly interesting in the wake of Copernicus’s heliocentric theory” (Thompson 59). This directly ties into present-day Americans and the development of the Internet as a place where we can freely express ourselves through our individual and original writing. If the people who surround us are writing more due to the accessibility and convenience of the Internet, we will follow the crowd due to our human nature of being “pack animals”. However, the increase in popularity may lead to more competition such as: “Who always has a really well-written Facebook status” or even, “Who has the cleverest captions to the pictures on Instagram?” these rhetorical questions are just two examples in which Americans have found themselves to ask while surfing through social media sites and directly correlates to the increase in human cognition. This is evident in human nature to always be “on top” and have a competitive “alpha” mentality. This claim of Thompson’s is quite effective as he brings a new element into his evidence by adding an example from history. He proves that this is the way human behavior has worked for centuries and there is no reason why now is the time when that comes to an end. One of Thompson’s concluding points includes a personal anecdote on Ernest Duchesne and his original discovery of penicillin. Due to the fact that Duchesne was young and not very well known, his writings of the discovery weren’t noticed. It took 47 years, and millions of people dead from diseases, for its rediscovery by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming to finally be accepted by the public. “Failed networks kill ideas” (Thompson 61). This was the perfect thing for Thompson to say in his work because it truly adds another element of pathos. Pathos is an important component in successful writing today because the reader is given the opportunity to understand in more of a personal manner. This writing technique is becoming more popular because Americans are starting to understand what grabs the reader’s attention and allows for the author to be easily noticed. If Duchesne and Fleming had the same connections we do today, millions of innocent lives would have been saved.

            To wrap it all up, it is clear that Thompson was able to connect to the reader through his various writing styles and types of evidence. I have portrayed in this paper, his exemplary use of just three of his main claims: an account from history, experimental study, and lastly, a personal anecdote. His argument is very relevant which is another main reason why so many people are interested in what he has to say. It has been a common misunderstanding in the past that technology was actually the antagonist of a developing society and used as a crutch for lazy writing. But through his writing, people began to listen; for what he had to say instilled a new thought in the minds of people whom technology greatly affects. The Internet “encourages public thinking and resolves multiples on a much larger scale and at a pace more dementedly rapid” (Thompson 61).

            To wrap it all up, it is clear that Thompson was able to connect to the reader through his various writing styles and types of evidence. I have portrayed in this paper, his exemplary use of just three of his main claims: an account from history, experimental study, and lastly, a personal anecdote. His argument is very relevant which is another main reason why so many people are interested in what he has to say. It has been a common misunderstanding in the past that technology was actually the antagonist of a developing society and used as a crutch for lazy writing. But through his writing, people began to listen; for what he had to say instilled a new thought in the minds of people whom technology greatly affects. The Internet “encourages public thinking and resolves multiples on a much larger scale and at a pace more dementedly rapid” (Thompson 61).