Reading Response 1 :)

In his recent work, “The New Literacy”, Clive Thompson talks about the controversy about today’s technology. Some say that technology is harming the way kids write today. Specifically he talked about John Sutherland. He says that technology is dehydrating language into “bleak, bald, sad shorthand,” and believes that an age of illiteracy is at hand. A professor of writing at Stanford University, Andrea Lunsford, disagrees and has evidence to prove it. It is implied from how much he talks about Lunsford’s project and results that Thompson agrees. He goes on to write how Andrea Lunsford says that “technology isn’t killing our ability to write. It’s reviving it- and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.” Clive Thompson finishes by saying, “What today’s young people know is that knowing who you are writing for and why might be the most crucial factor of all.” “The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is controversial and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.”
My own view is that technology is helping kids today express themselves through writing. Though I concede that some students do not use technology to their benefit and end up on Facebook during class, I still maintain that technology does more good than harm. For example there are more resources available on the internet because of technology. Also, as Andrea Lunsford found “that young people today write far more than any generation before them,” and this is because of technology. Although some might object that “Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering…and texting has dehydrated language,” I reply that it helps students express themselves and learn to write with a purpose. As a student, writing things I care about is far easier than things I don’t. I will research more and discuss more about things when I know I am writing for a purpose. Writing for just a grade does not really encourage writing, but make it an enemy.
Writing without a purpose makes writing just hours of long, hard work, not a creative way to express one’s self. Writing can be so much more than a grade. It can be a feeling or an opinion, which is not what I learned in high school. I have a Facebook, MySpace, and my own blog. I also used to text non-stop. If it weren’t for these things I probably never would have started writing or learned how to express an opinion. Writing when I have an audience makes me feel like what I have to say is important, which makes me only want to write more.
I believe that technology can be helpful and be a great tool to our learning process if it is used in the proper way. In my final response to Thompson’s work I agree that technology has its advantages and its disadvantages, but I think overall it will benefit the students of today more than harm our language.