Truth or Fallacy?

"The Future of Reading" is a well written blog post written by Jonah Lehrer. Lehrer explores why he thinks that people are going to move towards reading on e-readers vs. reading printed text. Lehrer is all for the shift of text going from the printed medium to digital medium but, within his post he does discuss a few of his concerns with doing so. At first glance, Lehrer’s argument looks well written but when you explore the rhetorical situation in his article you begin to poke holes in his argument. Jonah Lehrer’s missing elements in his article destroyed the work he put into his rhetorical situation.

Before, you even begin to read the article first situation that is working against his work is his reputation in his discourse community. A discourse community is a community with similar interest that creates discourse amongst themselves. Lehrer’s ethos is questionable amongst his community but it doesn’t mean that he can’t redeem himself.

Lehrer’s writing is very convincing from the beginning, he does a great job of luring his audience in little by little through out his article. His comparison of the situation of the e-reader vs. the traditional text was great comparison to the radio vs. using digital media to listen to music, wasn’t too complex that people wouldn’t be able to get it. Playing off the previous knowledge that his discourse community might come in with making the reference to the radio was also a good idea because a good portion of his discourse community is into electronics.

Lehrer further strengths his argument by providing he is knowledgeable on the subject by mentioning how long we have been printing books. By acknowledging that he knows how long books have been made and how easy it is to get an e-reader today he is acknowledging people who are on both sides of the argument, which is what a good writer is supposed to do.

Lehrer is also vulnerable with his readers when he lets them know he is “nervous”. By Lehrer acknowledging that his emotions it makes him more human to his readers. After, making this statement Lehrer takes the middle ground and says that he gets why people are into digital technology because it can be so clear to view but, he thinks that is going to be the down fall of the action of reading. That is when Lehrer finally explains his rhetorical situation but points to a deeper matter within. E-readers are not just the problem but it is what effect it is to have on reading that Lehrer finds the issue in. His main argument for this is that the screens are too bright for us to focus on the text thus causing us to really read sentence but, more so glance at words.

Lehrer argument goes down hill fast after this because his only source that he uses to support his argument is not valid. I do acknowledge that sometimes as readers we are supposed to give grace but, the problem is this is not the first time a link has not worked in Lehrer work. In the article called Jonah Lehrer’s Journalistic Misdeeds at Wired.com by Charles Seife it goes into how Lehrer does not use valid sources or makes them up. For the rest of Lehrer’s argument it’s hard to believe anything he says because he only used one source.

Another issue with the article is that towards the end he states a lot of personal opinion with no support to back him up. By Lehrer doing this it lessons the credibility of his work because readers want to know that others support your work especially when you’re writing about science. Jonah Lehrer left readers not to think about rather his rhetorical situation was correct but rather the evidence used to support his argument was true of fallacy?