Techonlogy Past and Present

Kylie Garrison

A variety of educational professors agree that today’s technology is negatively affecting students’ writing capabilities. Some examples of today’s technology are texting on a cell phone, emails, Facebook, and PowerPoint. Some cite the negative influence of Facebook, on which a shorthand, descriptive way of writing is used, when discussing the decreased skill needed by today’s young writers. Also faulted is cell phone texting referred to as “bleak, bald, sad shorthand writing”. In “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”, he mentions the huge college writing project called the Stanford Study of Writing. The study took place from 2001 to 2006 and analyzed 14,672 writing samples from students. These samples included assignments from the classroom, journal entries, emails, blogs, chat sessions, and formal essays. The study conclusions were startling! The study found that 38 percent of student writing happened outside the classroom. This type of writing is referred to as “life writing”. Clive Thompson’s belief contradicts this as he feels that this generation of technology is actually reviving literacy. Young people today write far more than all young people before them. So much of kids’ socializing involves writing and happens outside of the classroom. Young people are also learning to write for a specific person so the writing is more specific and personal, capturing the reader’s attention. This form of writing is what rhetoricians’ call kairos, the act of assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. This encourages creativity rather than discourage it like has been commonly accepted in professional circles.
It is easy to forget how much things have changed in past years. Before the Internet, Americans never wrote anything unless they were a student in school or had a job that required writing. The world of online chatting and email is public and conversational, which more closely resembles the Greek creation of writing. Many adults feel that we teenagers are less illiterate and too modern. Others disagree and consider us progressive and more literate. In my opinion because young people’s expanded styles of writing actually make us more literate.
I personally agree with Clive Thompson that technology today is actually increasing writing skills and fostering enthusiasm. My personal experience, as someone who writes many times a day on Facebook and texting, is that I get far more practice writing creatively than I would if school were my only venue. I feel that I can express myself better and my writing is more colorful and descriptive in my texting than I am able to do for school papers. I do notice that I wrote differently depending on who I am writing to. Some times my writing is cheerful and descriptive, other times it is strictly informational and brief. It comes in variety considering who I am communicating with. I believe that the constant texting is opportunity for practice. Writing has evolved over time and my generation has become more creative and comfortable writing papers of many types. Technology and society have changed traumatically and all we can do is change with it.