Summary Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson has recently put out his thoughts and beliefs about how technology is affecting the modern student of today. His conclusion, to the surprise of a lot I would assume, was that technology is affecting students in a positive way. He quotes John Sutherland, an English professor at University College of London, as saying that texting has dehydrated language into "bleak, bald, sad shorthand". To some this may sound absurd, but many pundits would agree with him. They believe that social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter along with texting and other new ways of communication have all affected the ability for students to write properly and with an actual purpose and meaning behind their words written. But with one opinion, another comes to contradict. Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, believes quite the opposite from John Sutherland. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14,672 student writing samples-everything from in class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions. “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization...technology isn’t killing our ability to write. It’s reliving it-and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.” Lunsford believes that we are growing and even revolutionizing our ability to write, and it is pushing our writing into bigger things. Students today are writing more than any generation ever before mostly due to the fact of the growth of technology and this is giving us the ability to enhance our writing. Before the Internet Americans were writing less unless it was required from a job or from school. Lunsford claims that students are good at assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across also called kairos. Students have developed the ability to get their points across to an audience because they are so used to communicating with people through online sources; this now becomes a custom and is naturally occurring through the writing of the student. This seems to be a rather remarkable ability acquired just by texting or chatting on Facebook. In Lunsford’s writing samples she did not find any examples of bad writing instead they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. Students in America would rather write to an audience that is known rather than for example an in class essay. Students feel more at ease and comfortable with a known audience because to them writing is about “persuading, organizing and debating.” I believe that we are writing a lot these days, it may be pointless at times but students and Americans are writing and trying to get their ideas and points across to others that share or disagree with them. To believe that we are unable to write our thoughts down on paper without a meaningful thought process behind it, I think is a bit exaggerated. As long as students are writing this means that they are thinking and thinking only leads to progression.