The New Literacy

In the short essay "The New Literacy" Clive Thompson explores the idea of that Facebook, Powerpoint and Texting have formed two opinions of what these applications have done to our modern world today. The essay starts with a very strong sentence and Thompson states " As the school year begins, be ready to hear pundits fretting once again about how kids today can't write-and technology is to blame" (Par. 1). John Sutherland of University of London has explained these forms of technology make the younger generation speak in language that is "bleak,bald,sad shorthand"(Par. 1). On the other side of the spectrum Andrea Lunsford a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University could not disagree with this more. Lunsford states from one of her studies " From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples-everything from in class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts to chat sessions" and then goes on by saying " I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since the Greek civilization"(Par. 2,3). Lunsford is under the impression that this technology is actually reviving our literacy and pushing it into new directions. The younger generation writes far more then any other generation so far and she calls the writing that we do via facebook, twitter or texting as "Life Writing."Americans have increased there writing in such a vast amount just because the only time we wrote was either for school or a job application or something of the sort. By having this internet it opens up the variety of writings you can do from posting a poem and getting feed back to writing about a hobby on a web page so you can connect with someone with the same interests. Thompson states that "When Lunsford examined the work of first year students, she didn't find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper"(Par. 7). Students now a days have felt the feeling of others responding to what they say on the internet and I think and Lunsford examined this same concept that students do not understand the reason to write a paper where the audience is just the teacher. It is not very motivating when you know only one person will read the paper and give you constructive criticism on the writing. The only reason most students write this papers are just for the grade and what kind of knowledge will you get from that if you truly have no real closeness or true feeling for the piece you are writing except just to get a good grade and pass your class. Clive Thompson ends his essay with a very powerful two sentences and I quote Thompson "We think of writing as either good or bad. What today's young people know is that knowing who you're writing for and why you're writing might be the most crucial factor of all"(Par. 9). My belief on this is that writing is writing anyway you look at it. Some writing is different then others such as a formal in-class essay to a poem or a out of class research paper to a text message. But all of these make us think in different ways and gain a better and more true knowledge of how to write and how to address opinions and all kinds of different writing. There is no bad or good in writing in my opinion but it all depends on how you truly see these writings and how they are change the modern day world of becoming in this sense of a "Age of New Literacy".