Clive Thompson and the New Literacy

In Clive Thompsons recent work titled “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy.” He discusses the technology of today influencing the ability to write, or literacy, of todays generation. John Sutherland is very opposed to the technology stating that “Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has dehydrated language into bleak, bald, sad shorthand.” (par 1) But further on in his article Thompson uses Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford, to debunk the statement Sutherland has made. Lunsford conducted a study called “The Stanford Study of Writing.” This large project spanned five years from ’01 to ’06. Approximately 14,672 writing samples from students were studied, anything from in-class assignments, essays, emails, chat sessions, and even journal entries were taken in. So is technology supposedly killing our literacy? Lunsford thinks not, she claims “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.” (3) Something that Clive seems to hint at is that this Literacy Revolution has happened right under our noses. Most students today will only write things in school that have one member in its audience and that is the teacher, or instructor. When writing like this one must only keep in mind the expectations of the person who will judge our text and grade us accordingly. But with this technology brings social networks so large that sometimes the audience may be incomprehensible in size. So when writing thoughts on these networks we only speak our mind, what we feel, there is no rubric or status quo that must be abided by. I personally feel that this Literacy Revolution is a very good thing, and that it is not negatively influencing our ability to write and produce texts. Yes, more often than not I do write correctly in a post on the internet or in a text, or even in an e-mail, but I will use different slang, abbreviations, and words that are rarely found in an essay submitted for a class. But that does not mean I will use that kinds of wording in an essay required for class, I will use proper grammar and no slang, but if it is to be a persuasive essay, it will be persuasive. This is important, in paragraph 5 Clive states that “Before the internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text, they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.” This Literacy Revolution is amazing. Todays students are adapting their writing for different needs, situations, circumstances, and audiences. They are changing the technique that they use, the kind of tone they produce, all to get the point across, that main idea. I can tell, because I like to write a lot, whether it is in a text message sent from my phone, to a post that nearly anyone can read on the internet, I get the point across.