"The New Literacy"

In his recent work, Clive Thompson wrote an article on New Literacy, discussing the controversial topic about how texting, blogging, and technology are affecting students’ writing. People today like experts, educators, or older generations assume that kids today can’t write because of technology. Thompson claims the fact that this is completely untrue, a myth even. Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing at Stanford University, agrees with Thompson when she states, “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization” (1). In other words, Lunsford believes that students aren’t actually becoming illiterate, but instead, increasing the capability to write, so much that people haven’t seen this kind of literate peak since the Greek civilization. The Greek civilization had a powerful influence over empires and many parts of the world and they flourished in all regions of their culture, especially their literature when they wrote countless plays, poems and philosophies. I believe that Lunsford is true when she claims that kids today are writing an immense amount more than earlier generations and it’s all do to technology. Thompson even asserts that technology isn’t killing our ability to write, it’s reviving it! Since technology, so much socializing is occurring on the web and how most people interact is by writing. Before internet even existed, people didn’t even write unless it was for a school assignment or required for work. But now we have more of a freedom to say what’s on our minds in a more convenient way. Technology has helped students open new doors for themselves. Students, according to Lunsford’s team, have this astonishing skill called kairos, meaning, being able to assess their audience to best get their point across. Technology, surprising to most, is helping increase young people’s literacy because we almost always write for an audience. For the students, writing has to do with persuading, organizing, or debating, even if it’s over something trivial. All this still amounts to good prose to them.
My own view is that, many people are writing way more and the effect of that means they are becoming more literate and prone to good writing styles. Though I concede that some students are not writing a great deal and a few are replacing carefully written essays with texting, I still maintain that most are exceeding the expectations of Thompson or Lunsford. For example, I know several people who because of blogging and technology are excellent writers, like my sister. Also, a project done by Lunsford, where she collected 14,672 student writing samples showed that there was not a single example of “texting speak” in an academic paper. Although some might object that the ratio to the two are weighed very differently and that more are worsening rather than succeeding, I reply that this is false because the technology is making online writing forthcoming and open and this is forcing students to push their literacy to new directions. This issue is important because young people are writing more and because of that inevitable changes are going to occur, a new literacy.