Reading Responce 3

In Clive Thompson’s article ‘New Literacy’ he stated and believes that ‘online media is pushing literacy into cool directions,’ and I have agreed with Thompson. Technology today has given people, young and old – specifically students – the means to put their learned studies in writing, to work. Media accounts have provided us a huge platform, where we are able to reach out to our audience through our writing. Our ideas and thoughts have been brought to life through our words, our sentence structure and the use of our conventions. All of these parts, add to the whole; our capability to connect with our audience by being able to clearly assert our tone.

After reading professor and critic, Sven Birkerts’ piece, ‘The Owl Has Flown,’ I believe that it leads my ideas, about online media accounts today, in a new direction. In Birkerts work ‘The Owl Has Flown,’ Birkerts contends that, ‘In our culture, access is not a problem, but proliferation is.’ (30) Birkerts then maintains that, ‘The inscription is light but it covers vast territories: quantity is elevated over quality. The possibility of maximum focus is undercut by the awareness of the unread texts that await. The result is that we know countless more “bits” of information, both important and trivial, than our ancestors.’ (30)

In making these comments Birkerts is stating two things – that our availability to access our vast reading selections isn’t what is hurting us as readers and our roles of writing but it is the rapid spread and increase in size of the selection that is. Because of the gigantesque size of our reading selection, we; as readers and writers, are unable to completely immerse ourselves into a writing piece and comprehend the authors main focus and be able to form our own opinion and think about the underlying ideas that the author is bringing to our attention. Because of the sheer size of the selection we find ourselves all too eager to jump from one piece to the next, checking off reading pieces on our long list of awaited, potential good reads; simply scanning and skimming over the text and not allowing our minds to soak up and understand the written and unwritten ideas.

Because of these two quotes, I feel that technology doesn’t just effect us as writers, but it also effects us as readers. Technology today has become the Disney Land for readers and writers – so many new reads – the next piece better then the first, excitement and eagerness. Our attention is being pulled into too many different directions that we aren’t able to take in and fully accept what is directly in front of us, always wanting the next, before we finish the first.