Topic > Smarter Than You Think by Clive Thompson: The Notion of Cyber ​​Thinking

In his informative book, Smarter Than You Think, Clive Thompson uses rhetorical strategies to explain to audiences how technology is used and how it affects our lives. It pursues this goal by providing various types of evidence and addressing concerns and opposing opinions that the public may have. In doing so, he makes a series of claims that highlight his belief that the Internet is improving and revolutionizing the way we write. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay With the Internet, we now have a platform where we are able to easily make connections. The community within which we form these connections greatly influences the way we think. Furthermore, our surroundings greatly influence the way we think about things, for this reason and the fact that most scientists do not work in closed working environments, the discoveries that are made are inevitable. For example, four astronomers discovered sunspots at the same time, this is due to the fact that in 1611 the quality of the lenses of the telescopes was mature enough to finally be able to detect that small detail, and partly to the fact that, at that time With time, questions about the sun and its role in the universe have become interesting again in the wake of Copernicus' heliocentric theory. Nearly forty years after the term "multiple theory" was coined by Ogburn and Thomas, Metron discovered that when innovators are unaware of each other, the innovation process slows. A survey of mathematicians found that 31% unknowingly duplicated a colleague's work because neither was aware of the other's work. If they had known of each other's existence, they could have collaborated and completed the job in half the time and with more insight. An example of this event is the story of Ernest Duchesne, he was the original discoverer of penicillin. He attended a French military school in the mid-1890s when he noticed a strange occurrence: the stable boys who cared for the horses left their saddles damp in a dark room so that mold would grow under them. They explained to him that they did it because the mold helped heal the horse's saddle sores. Fascinated by this idea, Duchesne conducted some experiments where he treated sick guinea pigs with a solution, similar to that of saddles, obtained from mold. He found that the guinea pigs recovered completely. Duchesne took his findings and wrote them up for his doctoral thesis. Due to his young age and not being well known, the French Institut Pasteur did not recognize him. Thirty-two years would pass before a Scottish scientist, Alexander Fleming, rediscovered penicillin, totally unaware of Duchesne's discoveries. The craziest part of all this is that millions of people died during that time and it could have been prevented with a cure that wasn't recognized at the time. With the Internet, we now have a platform to share and ask others for help to collaborate and get things done more efficiently. Before the Internet we made connections based on our surroundings, the difference now is that with the Internet we not only make connections based on our current surroundings but also based on other people's surroundings, the Internet has opened a door that it will take the world around instantly. No matter what you write online, whether it's a comment on an image or a blog post, you're writing to an audience. Whether the audience is 2 or 20,000 people, always do your best toDon't embarrass yourself. Of course, no one wants to be grammatically incorrect or write something badly, so writers are forced to think twice about the content of their post, which is called the audience effect. This is mainly the change in one's performance when one knows that others will be watching. It not only changes the way we live writing, but also the way we think and solve problems. An experiment conducted by a group of professors at Vanderbilt University in 2008 studied the effect of audiences on young children. The experiment took place by asking three separate groups of about a dozen four- and five-year-olds to predict what would follow in a pattern of colored insects. The children included in the first group were asked to solve the puzzle alone in silence. Meanwhile, the children in the second group were asked to vocalize into a recorder while solving the puzzles. Finally, the children in the third group were asked to explain to their mothers how they were solving the puzzle. The results were not very shocking: the kids who worked silently on their own did the worst, while those who spoke into the recorders did slightly better thanks to the process of articulating their thinking process out loud. However, the The group that did best was the one that had a significant audience. This effect can also be observed in older students and adults. In another study conducted, their English professor, Clarke Gray, at Douglas College, asked college students to create a Wikipedia post about Canadian writers. Because on this highly public platform others can edit or delete your post if they disagree, students were inclined to write more formally and find as many sources as possible to support their information. Amazed by the student's work, she writes, “they often turn in these short essays without any citations, but with Wikipedia, they suddenly found themselves up until two in the morning refining and rewriting entries and carefully sourcing everything. “Such a drastic change in work ethic, but the only difference was that the whole world was their audience and not just their teacher. In this section, Thompson uses ethos as a rhetorical strategy, he clearly states his sources , making his claims more reliable and less likely to be disputed As technology grows, we become more and more dependent on our phones and computers with the increase in device usage also comes speculation about whether or not they cloud the mind. Thompson argues that not only does it not dull the mind, but it also helps us on an intellectual level. Instead of looking at technology negatively, Thompson aims to educate us on the effects technology actually has on us, instead of just focusing on it. on the negatives, as most people seem to do, try to shed light on all the positives that come with technology as it continues to evolve. One of the main arguments about technology is that it has turned this generation into a bunch of lazy, unstructured writers, but studies show that we're actually writing now more than ever. Andrea Lunsford, an English professor at Stanford University and one of the leading American researchers on the way young people write, talks about the fact that not only are today's freshmen's homework six times longer than in the past, but they also tend to be complex . On top of all this, others have also found that those who send a lot of messages appear to have slightly better spelling and literacy skills than those who don't. In a quote from.