Clive Thompson on "The New Literacy"

In his recent work, Clive Thompson wrote an article called “The New Literacy”, where he suggests that technology has had both a positive and negative impact on today’s writers. A professor at Stanford University, Andrea Lunsford, did a study to scrutinize college students’ prose; she claims that students are benefiting from all of the technology because they’re writing more than any generation before them. Anything from texting to emailing, to facebook comments; people are taking full advantage of the latest technology and putting it to good use. On the other hand, Professor John Sutherland (A London English professor mentioned in Thompson’s article) questions if technology could possibly be a distraction for young writers and that it may be interfering with their skills, language, and tone in their academic writing.
Although Thompson does not say so directly, he apparently assumes that technology has ultimately allowed people to teach themselves more helpful ways of how to write, in different areas of writing because of the technology we have today. By having this technology, he assumes that by people not being forced to write, that they actually write more.
In my own opinion, I feel that technology has become the new and improved form of literacy. It’s allowing people to write at their own pace and style. Technology gives us the power to express anything we feel the need to, without having to worry about the criteria and pressures of an academic assignment. Although, I do concede with Professor John Sutherland and a good point he had made. He says that, “video and powerpoint have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has dehydrated language into bleak, bald and shorthand.” Sutherland believes that technology has ruined the creativity and craftiness of essays that had potential. I feel that although technology gives us more freedom, that there are no guidelines or restrictions and it allows us to use whatever language or expressions we want. This could potentially lead to poor sentence structure and grammar in the classroom atmosphere, but I still maintain that having the opportunity to free write encourages people of all backgrounds and cultures to write and develop better communication skills. For example, the internet allows people across the world to communicate to each other, keep in touch, and by doing this, they are more obligated to write in their free time. Although some may object that these forms of technology can be a distraction in everyday life, I reply that even though it may be deferring from other important things, that it’s really giving people the opportunity to converse, vent or even debate which can lead to good writing skills further down the road.
This is an important issue because writing can be an absolute nightmare for some people, while for others; it’s a way to escape, but having the technology that we have today makes it easier for the people that dread it, to become more comfortable with it and learn to love it. It lets them write in whatever way they want and explore different topics of conversation, while developing a larger vocabulary and staying focused one topic. Technology also lets writers of all ages explore skills they haven’t yet developed, or improve on ones they already have. This in turn makes them more comfortable in academic writing situations. As I mentioned earlier, Andrea Lunsford mentions how young people today write far more than any generation before them has. I truly believe in this because of how many more writing possibilities there are today, and I think that everyone (especially young writers) have really benefited from this.