The New Literacy - Techno Writing

In discussions of literacy, one controversial issue has been how technology is involved in a student’s writing. Clive Thompson has recently published an article concerning this new literacy that technology has crippled a student’s ability to write. John Sutherland, a professor at University College of London English, agrees, claiming that not only the unique language of texting, video, PowerPoint, and internet profiles “encourages narcissistic blabbering,” but also “has dehydrated language into bleak, bald, sad shorthand.” A professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, Andrea Lunsford, disagrees saying technology is not all to blame. Lunsford has conducted a study from 2001 to 2006 to collect and analyze 14,672 student writing samples, everything from essays to texting. She has come to the conclusion that this writing by technology is a “literacy revolution,” continuing that “technology isn’t killing our ability to write. It’s reviving it…” Today’s generation writes more often to a larger audience than any before them. Whether or not people today are writing more often, the question at hand is, is this “techno writing” hindering the ability to write proficiently. What Lunsford and her team found that was so significant is that due to this new literacy, students are more adroit in what is called kairos. Assessing the audience and adapting your tone and technique to best get your point across is what karios means. What it comes down to is good teaching and the mastering of formal academic prose is still a must. However what matters most out of this new literacy, is that students writing changes dramatically in and out of the classroom due to their audience, or what and who they are writing to and about.
My own view is that too many people depend on the internet, or technology as a whole. This dependence has, I believe, harmed our ability to write. Texting is what is talked about most because it is one of the main ways people communicate, or write. This type of writing is sloppy shorthand and some may and probably already have carried this over into their academic writing. I myself am not addicted to texting or chatting on the internet, while others that I know are addicted to this style of writing. When texting you could possibly spell things wrong, use slang and abbreviate words and not have to worry about if the other person(s) is going to understand what you just wrote because that is how the general public communicates by texting. This form of writing can carry over to writing academic papers, which is harmful. Though I must agree that technology has shifted a student’s writing, for the reason that this generation understands and adapts their own writing style just to communicate and get their point across to the audience. With this style of writing I have seen people write grammatically incorrect. This issue is vital because what I call “techno writing” is to blame for this grammatically incorrect way that flows over into our academic writing. By using this “techno writing” to converse with your audience, I arbitrate, is harmful to a students’ writing.