B1: The Loneliness of The Interconnected - Charles Seife

Charles Seife does an amazing job at getting his point across in The Loneliness of the Interconnected. His purpose in writing this piece is to give readers new and fresh insight. The use of a quotation at the beginning of his writing helps him catch the reader’s attention and give a glimpse of the topic he will address: human interaction. The evidence he provides gives his writing credibility and further supports his purpose to educate/inform about all aspects of information including its impacts on societies interactions and “common” beliefs. Seife explains that even though people feel comfort in numbers there is loneliness because their crowd becomes limited. He encourages others to question their environments by listing numerous times the internet has negatively led to isolation in society. People get caught up in their own information bubble because of how the media markets specifically to every individual. The author highlights the narrowness that media has created and explains that although the internet is very useful, Seife then provides a contrasting view that explains the destruction and isolation progressing from the vastness of internet. Wow, that page turn though! By using a short concise sentence paragraph: “Then came the internet,” the author clearly separates the description of life before from the example of life after impact by the web. Near the end of the piece Seife’s tone becomes more serious about how the impacts are inescapable and affect everyone. He also boosts the effect by using historical examples all the way through to 21^st century events. This piece makes people more aware of what they read because anyone can find anything they want on the internet if they look hard enough and it is common for people to prefer to latch onto information that supports their opinion and disregard information that disproves the opinion. Note: It’s a good thing I just looked up “Mort Zuckerman” because I was unfamiliar with him and almost analyzed it as a purposeful misspelling of “Mark Zuckerberg.” If that were the case, the purpose of misspelling Zuckerberg’s name might be to surprise readers with the extent of reach that fame and money can give someone. So much that readers would recognize the obvious mess up of his name almost instantly, getting an important message across.