Clive Thompson on the New Literacy...

Taylor Thetford

In the article, Clive Thompson on the New Literacy, Thompson opposed the argument that because of new technology and internet, young people's writing abilities have suffered. Many people such as University College of London professor John Sutherland believe that technology have effected young writers of the day for the worse, turning there “language” into a sort of “bleak, bald, shorthand” as he puts it. Thompson goes on to support his opinion though various studies performed by collage professors that conclude that we are going through a writing revolution rather that the writing techniques of people are getting worse and worse over time. Thompson believe that young people today are writing more than they ever have because of the internet, texting and other technologies.

My view of the topic is that the writers of today are very different than the ones from the past. As we are in a very technological savvy era, people today have the benefit of having access to many resources that writers of the almost near past could have only dreamed about. Though I do understand the opinion of John Sutherland, I feel that time and a 160 character space dictates what we say and how we say it. I also think that this “bleak, bald, shorthand” that Sutherland is talking about is from a past era of texting which is out of date and no longer in existence to young people of today. With that being said, I think that texting gets a point across in a prompt manner that “old school” professors as well as average people either don't understand or refuse to understand only because they aren't used to this way of communication that is vital to the modern world. I feel that these kind of people believe that their way of communication is the only way to get their point across and that is completely wrong.

I believe that this is a very important topic because almost everyday technology is evolving and improving therefore changing our way of communication rather quickly. Because of this, we also learn and evolve, the ways of the past such as writing things down with pencil and paper are prehistoric compared to typing on a MacBook Pro. The fact is, people are going to have to accept that people text, email, and Facebook instead of mailing letters to one another. The method of passing notes to one another in class has been replaced with the ever popular texting. And you can be home alone and tell all your friends and family what exactly it is you're doing or thinking through one message posted instead of calling them or telling them in person. Its not that people have changed, but our ways of doing things are the ones who are quickly advancing in the technological world we live in today.