Steven Johnson Everything Bad Is Good For You Analysis

As a journalist, media theorist, and author of Everything Bad Is Good for You, Steven Johnson is a formidable activist for the most revolutionary technological achievement to date; the internet. In “Dawn of the digital natives,” an article in the Guardian, Johnson urges readers to look at the positive impact of the new electronic media age and critically at the National Endowment for the Arts study “To Read or Not to Read” that provoked a panic about the decline of reading. However, Nicholas Carr, a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist, shares his testimony of how his internet usage of more than a decade has eroded his capacity to concentrate and contemplate. Although the two articles were published in 2008, before the explosion of smartphone sales in 2012, the presence of social media, YouTube, and smartphones increased sensitivity to the issue. Consequently, this sensitivity might make readers more receptive to opinions about these new technologies. While both Johnson and Carr both implement an impressive combination of the three modes of persuasion, Johnson fails to follow through with an adequate balance of

However, Nicholas Carr shares his testimony of how internet usage has eroded people’s capacity to concentrate and contemplate effectively. Johnson impressively conveys his perspective in an efficient and clever manner to his audience. Carr, on the other hand, achieves an extraordinary balance of perspective, strategy, and evidence that he develops throughout his article which becomes a vacuum of interest to curious readers. However, in the end, Johnson fails to effectively weave and develop his opinions with effective evidence in a way that does not cause a repulsive impulse with his blatant