New Literacy.

In Clive Thompson’s essay “New Literacy” he begins by stating that peoples view point today is that due to the mass amount of technology in our every day life we are becoming more and more illiterate. Thompson references John Sutherland, University College of London; with his statement that today technology is pushing for short hand with the use of power points, texting and online chatting. But Andrea Lunsford is doing a study of students at Stanford University on the types, amount and effects of all the writing students are doing. Lunsford found that 38% of student’s total writing is “life” writing, such as things like texting and online chatting. But she also found that the short hand and improper writing techniques in life writing never transfers into more formal work such as academic writing. So what does this all mean? According to Thompson today’s writers are becoming experts of addressing their audience. This means whether students are texting, applying for a job, or turning in an English essay, they are able to address the specific audience of each writing and adapt the style and language to that specific writer. Thompson also brings to head the topic of collaborate working. Traditionally working with others and using sources with out a specific author has been considering plagiarizing. But with this study Thompson begins to draw the conclusion that writers of today do much better, and tend to, work together, whether it is in groups or online. This brings up a point of what is more important, the ability to produce a product, or the idea of plagiarism in its traditional sense.
Being a student myself I readily agree with Thompson in the sense that we are not becoming illiterate, but as Lunsford said “I think we are in the midst of a literacy revolution…” Lunsford’s point in this statement is the fact that today’s generation is writing more every day then any previous generation and it is all due to the new technology. In my life I send and receive 14,000 texts a month, that’s roughly 466 text messages a day. With just my texting alone I write more now than I did even two years ago, let alone the idea of people before the instant messaging on the internet or any form of technological socializing.
Although I send hundreds of texts with abbreviated words and sentences, status updates on line and many other types of writing that do not require proper writing, my ability to write a proper paper still improves. As Thompson concluded, we as the new generation are constantly improving our ability to address our audience. We know when it is appropriate to use a certain style of writing and language and when to use a different style. In my own life I have found this to prove it’s self as more than an accurate statement. In some aspects the ability to write in such a way that the teacher is asking has given me more trouble than if I did not know what the teacher was looking for. The ability to tell the teacher what they want has allowed me to not even background work before writing papers because of the ability to display what I know in a way that it will appear that I know what I am talking about.
Thompson, with the aid of Andrea Lunsford, are very accurate in their conclusions that we are now in the middle of a revolution now a collapse. Students are improving their writing every day and technology is to thank, not blame.