Summary Of Daniel Wegner Do Not Fear The Cybermind

In this age of technology and computers, the use of internet accessible devices in everyday tasks has exploded. In Daniel M. Wegner’s, “Do Not Fear the Cybermind,” the discussion of how the internet and technology have affected the human mind. Specifically, Wegner asserts that through the internet the human mind has expanded to and is contained collectively on the internet as one large cybermind. Wegner’s claim that everyone is part of a great cybermind is justified through his use of pathos, ethos, and logos. Wegner starts off by giving an anecdote on how he knows everything if he has his cell phone with him. When prompted with a question about a fact or simply spell checking, Wegner states, “the desire to consult the Web is almost like an

However, before he can give his results, he includes an introduction to his report: “In an experiment that Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, and I reported in the Journal Science last year” (388). This introduction is very important because it presents his collaborators for further research. Also, this implies he is credible, as a credible journal like Science published his study. Later in the article Wegner writes, “With my collaborators Toni Giuliano … and Paula Hertél, I wrote a paper” (389). Not only does Wegner complete an experiment, and write “Do Not Fear the Cybermind”, but he also wrote a paper. This second paper suggests dedication and expertise in the subject, boosting his credibility to make a claim on this subject. This credibility of the author and his dedication promote ethos and his

His experiment was to determine if when asked questions, subject were thinking about checking the internet. Wegner and his collaborators measured reactions times of naming colors of words of either technology or other themes. Wegner found, “after the batch of hard questions, people did indeed seem to have computers on their minds: many became especially slow to name the colors of computer-related words” (388). Wegner’s evidence from the experiment he and others ran show that his claim is not just something that he thought-up. Rather it is a claim with repeatable and testable evidence. After the first experiment, Wegner continues to the second experiment. To determine if the internet affected people’s ability to remember facts, he set to groups for a study. The first group were told to type 40 facts or pieces of knowledge into a computer, and were told the computer would not save what they typed. The second group was told the same, except that the computer would save what they typed. Wegner discovered that “those told that the computer would record everything were inclined promptly to forget them” (388). This second study further promotes the logical scientific approach to data collection and analysis. The presentation of these two studies allow Wegner to appeal to Logos and further justify his