Reading Response 1

In his recent work titled “The New Literacy”, Clive Thompson suggests that technology is and has been a big impact on how young people, as well as adults, perform their writing skills, and that it is not destroying our ability to write, but t is drastically improving it in many ways. On one hand, Thompson theory differs from University College of London English professor John Sutherland, who states that “Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering” and “Texting had dehydrated language into bleak, bald, sad shorthand.” Sutherland believes that technology is the utmost reason to why kids today cannot write. On the other hand, Stanford University professor Andrea Lunsford defines the opposite; that “young people today write far more than any generation before them” and that “technology isn’t killing our ability to write… it’s reviving it”. Lunsford conducted a project called the Stanford Study of Writing, and from the years 2001 to 2006 she had gathered 14,672 pieces of writing - in-class assignments, blog posts, and formal essays are some examples - from Stanford students. Her results were that 38 percent of the writing took place outside of class. Lunsford’s studies also showed that the work of first-year students did not have a single example of texting speak in an academic paper, even with students practically texting non-stop these days. One implication of Thompson’s treatment of technology improving how we write is that students will more likely write for an audience, rather than one or two people. Studies show that students who write for an audience show their best writing skills, and that it gave them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. Although Thompson does not say so directly, he apparently assumes that technology has increased young people’s ability to demonstrate acceptable pieces of writing. My own view is that technology is encouraging everyone to write more, and to be more social with other students, co-workers, and family members. Though I concede that more writing could be done on paper and it could be taken more seriously, I still maintain that we, as a society, have become more artistic and challenged with what we demonstrate in writing. For example, the internet allows us to access sites to where we can socialize with the world around us, without having to even leave our seat. Phones and email have made sending messages easier and more accessible. Although some might object that technology is to blame, and that it is corrupting the minds of young people, I reply that it is not in any way. It is moving us forward to our future filled with new and more intriguing technology, and our writing skills will be even better than before. The issue is important because writing is an essential part of who we are and how our society has become what it is today. Without technology, chances of socializing less and losing touch with each other is greater. Technology is advancing our writing skills, and it will undoubtedly be used in the near and distant future for quite some time.