Reading Respone 1

Nate Averna
January 8, 2009
English 100
Reading Response 1

The resent article “The New Literacy” by Clive Thompson supports Andrea Lunsford ideological thinking that technology (texting, e-mailing, or chatting online) has sparked a “Literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization”; said Lunsford. Coincidently, these ideas oppose the thoughts of the “old days” before the internet was readily accessible. Lunsford opposes pessimism like that of English professor John Sutherland who suggests that technology is causing kids to become illiterate and is not helping to better English. Lunsford explains that before the internet, hotmail, twitter, or texting became mainstream ways of writing, most people simply did not write unless they had an occupation that obligated them to do so. Lunsford’s study has shown how far we have come since those times.

Lunsford study, “Stanford Study of Writing”, uncloaked some interesting facts regarding technology and its modern implications. Suggesting that because people are sharing information with each other online, in one form or another, illiteracy is not increasing but it is actually decreasing. People are learning more about writing and using it more frequently then ever before. During Lunsford’s study she found that 38 percent of students attending Stanford University also wrote outside of the classroom. This out of the classroom writing is what Lunsford like to call “Life writing” because it was provoked, not by teachers and set curriculums, but by the individuals who simply want to write for the fun of it. According to the article, this trend of writing has proved valuable to many students’ and not detrimental. According to Sutherland this out of class writing has lead to a relaxedness or slang terminology that is appearing in academic papers. Lunsford study found no such relaxedness or slang in any academic paper she cited. One fact she did find was that many students today can acknowledge different audiences and have the ability to set different tones and voices with their writing.

My own view is that technology and the internet have made writing a part of our everyday lives and that it no longer can take a back set in an individual’s life. Though I concede that slang writing (example would be texting lol or brb) has become more popular and is downright confusing for someone who is not proactive with the modern trends, I still maintain that this technology is helping more then it is hurting. For example the conveniences of online shops, online chat lines, and or services such as Facebook have dramatically changed the way contemporary people communicate and share information. Such accessibility has made it possible to stay in contact with an old friend or even find a restaurant in a near by neighborhood, something that might have been difficult in the past. Although some might object that this informal trend is a slip in tradition, I reply that traditions change with new technologies. This issue is important because weather it is technology or tradition, academic writing or casually on the internet these new found technologies have intergraded their self’s into our everyday lives.