Tristan's Response to Thomspon

Tristan Bosman

In the article “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy” Clive Thompson introduces the idea that new technology is decreasing the literacy of the new era. By stating hard facts studied by John Sutherland this concept seems presumably possible. Sutherland has carefully examined over 14.5 thousand writing samples consisting of any type of writing from essays to instant message chat sessions. The evidence provided is extremely detailed and would easily persuade most people. Thompson disagrees with the downfall of literacy and believes that the technological advancements are aiding the ability to formally communicate. As stated “But is this explosion of prose good, on a technical level? Yes, Lunsford’s team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call ‘kairos’….” Kairos is described as the ability to drastically change speaking tone and technique while presenting to an audience.

Thompson does not begin by emphasizing literacy is being increased by technology but does exactly the opposite; explaining why Sutherland and his team believe it is being strongly decreased. He does this so readers can understand and grasp the idea that there are different opinions on the topic and he is not rambling on over something that has already been proven.

My own view is that the forthcoming technological advancements should in theory be increasing the literacy level. When people bring up the topic of these advancements ruining our ability to be literate my mind instantly jumps to texting. If you were to base this entire idea back about 5 years ago I could understand that texting would probably be creating an illiterate era. With the keys on phones people became lazy and used short cuts which now are not a huge issue because keyboards are on phones. Even with relatively cheap phones you have T9 which spells words for you, if you go up a little more in price you receive a full QWERTY keyboard exactly like on a computer. I believe this greatly helps keeping this era maintain literacy. Other advancements such as facebook, blogs, myspace, twitter, and forums also have the same type of issues as texting. Abbreviations are common with some users but there are also users that have extremely in depth conversations discussing issues deep enough to be in a classroom setting. All of these sources are leading to the original concept by Thompson and his team that we gain the ability of kairos. Though I concede that these technological advancements do not help maintain, or increase, the pre-defined median of literacy, I do strongly believe that in reality they are aiding in this problem. For example I can go on to my facebook and easily find status’s that provide evidence of strong literacy and I also can find a few that have every other word spelt wrong if I look. Although some might object that these ways of talking are increasing our countries ability to speak with each other, I reply that you can easily look at the facts and realize that it is not effecting this era at all; School systems have only been increasing and kids are learning a better base and fundamentals. This issue is important because our country is already in a rough time, to say the least, and if this issue starts to effect it more it needs to be known and published to help prevent a lapse.