Clive Thompson on "The New Literacy"

“Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering.” That is one of the very first lines in the essay “The New Literacy” by Clive Thompson. In this essay there is a another writer named Andrea Lunsford who is a professor at Stanford University and has some different outlooks on technology and how literacy is affected by all these new technologies, as well as how we as learners and citizens write now days.

Lunsford states, “I think we are in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.” (par 3) I think she is completely right, most of the writing we do now is far different then what people used to do. People don’t write letters anymore, we simply write emails that are far more efficient. Lunsford and Thompson do not agree about this subject. Thompson’s theory is that kids these days are incapable of writing and that technology is behind the problem. But on the other hand, Lunsford has a point that is almost unarguable.

When Lunsford studied how we write these days, she found some really good points. She found that young people today are writing far more than any generation before. That is because of technology, she says that in the old days people may never write a paragraph again after they are done with school because their jobs don’t require it and there is no other reason too. Now we have 6 year olds online talking to their friends and constructing whole paragraphs. She goes along to say, “The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes as good writing.” (par 7).

Im not saying that Lunsford is against teaching and that all we need is internet to teach kids how to write properly, because that is definitely not true. There is a lot of “Slang” you could call it on the internet. There are many cases where you see even adults saying things like “Where u at?” or “U R 2????”. It is actually a little bit ridiculous. Lunsford states, “Of course, good teaching is always going to be crucial, as is the mastering of formal academic prose. But its also becoming clear that online media is pushing literacy into cool directions.” (Par 8). Such as texting or status updates where we can share our ideas and thoughts with the world. No other generation has had such power.
Overall, I fully agree with Lunsford in that we should use technology to our good. There can be bad things along with internet, but if used properly with old school teaching, technology can teach us great things.