Clive Thompson on the New Literacy

Clive Thompson has worked to introduce a completely new outlook on how technology and literacy are currently affecting each other, in his piece “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”. Thompson first introduces a view that many educated people carry today: that technology is killing our literacy level, because of the “dehydrated language” the majority of our writing has apparently become (par. 1). But then he covers a new approach to the subject, as he presents the “mammoth project” by Andrea Lunsford (an English professor at Stanford), named “Stanford Study of Writing” (par. 2). Informing us about the details of the project, Thompson directs our attention to the staggering statistics that have come up. He says “From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples,” and that “a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom,” (par 2 & 4). With this he concludes that Americans are beginning to write on a daily basis more than ever before. On top of that, we are “almost always [writing] for an audience” who is large and very real to us – versus for just one professor who isn’t going to tell his or her opinion on the thoughts we share (par 7). Because of this huge audience we’re actually speaking to, this writing is serving a purpose that is important to us. We want and need what we write to do our mind set justice, and accurately convey our thought and feelings. Apparently this has led to students becoming “remarkably adept” at “assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across,” (par. 6). Taking all of this into consideration he continues speaking about Andrea Lunsford’s project and her views in a positive light, leading us to believe he agrees with her statement that “…we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization," (par 3). In other words, Lunsford and Thompson believe that besides simply the style of our writing changing, we’re actually revolutionizing what constitutes as “good writing”. Finishing off his piece, Thompson concludes that “knowing who you're writing for and why you're writing might be the most crucial factor of all,” of a piece that is going to effectively serve its purpose, instead of the old fashioned belief that good writing is a work that has been slaved over for hours or days into the perfection of proper grammar, punctuation, and organization (par 9).

Personally, I have to partially, if not fully, agree with Thompson. I am left with plenty of room for convincing whether what the students of today write on the internet is “good writing” or not. But for the most part, I agree that writing is headed in a new direction, and with new directions there will always be old-fashioned critics who believe things ought to stay the way they’ve been for so long. And I think those critics have to loosed up, because I think they’re forgetting that the point of writing things down is to get a point across to another person. Because, no matter the grammar, punctuation or perfection of the piece, as long as it accomplishes that goal of informing and convincing others of something, it should be allowed to be called writing. Despite my veiws on that, I still have a very hard time thinking of a quick blog post or facebook wall post as literature. There is definitely a great difference between a quick message that gets a point across to some people and a piece of literature that has the power to reveal long and complex thought processes.