Reading Response to Birkerts

Today, students are communicating more through technology such as emails, texting, facebook, and myspace rather than in school on in class writing and texts. Students say that this is because they are able to communicate and write in their own form and style becasue they can choose their own audience. Where as, in a classroom they are only writing to one person, their teacher. When writing an essay they are told to write in a certain form of writing, and when talking to friends and family their form of writing does not have any boundaries. In the article Clive Thompson on the New Literacy by Clive Thompson, he states that students in our generation are writing more often due to technology which is helping our literacy and writing skills, as well as how we are communicating with one another. However, many still believe that technology is decreasing our writing skills in the classroom.
I believe that technology is helping our generations way of writing because we are writing more often, though I also believe it is hindering our communication face to face. When we talk to each other, I have noticed that students of our generation have a hard time looking into one anothers eyes. Our communication and the language we use tends to have a lot of slang or language and abbreviations that we use when we text. The new literacy is affecting our lives, our education, and the way we communicate with one another.
Birkerts, the author of the article The Owl Has Flown, talks about how we need to look deeper into the meaning and take time to analyze what we read. If we fail to do so, we are failing to gain the wisdom we need to know about a subject or topic and not just the "bits and pieces" of a topic. We are developing in terms of wisdom because of the constant onslaught of data and information in our daily lives. Birkerts also talks about how we aren't used to diving in a book or reading becuse we don't want to put in the work. Birkerts states, "A rather unfortunate vicious cycle can result, for the harder it is to do the work, the less incline we are to do it. Paradoxically, the harder the work, the more we need to do it." In other words, Birkerts is saying that we aren't used to putting the work in but we need to do so in order to know and gain the wisdom from which we are seeking it. Today, it is much easier for us to gain knowledge from watching television. It is easy because all we need to do is sit on the couch and watch it being done right in front of us.
This adds to my idea that we are losing communication face to face. It is easier to text or email because it is already at our fingertips; we don't have to go anywhere or talk to anyone. Texting and emailing is much more convenient. We aren't used to having to talk face to face as much as we have needed to in the past because we now have new technology that will do it for us. We don't put in the work as much as we should and I believe that we need to. Face to face communication is just as important as any other form.