The Age of Literacy
In Chris Hedges’ “America the Illiterate”, he states that America’s populace is rapidly degenerating into a state of illiteracy, shrinking away from written texts and sinking deeper and deeper into an image-based culture where it’s less about understanding and more about settling for the wittiest slogan or the brightest pictures. He says this almost as a superior, someone who has stood above the rest and not succumbed to the magnetism of the Internet or media drawls. But I have to disagree with Mr. Hedges. What if, through the constant advancements in technology and culture, we have moved forward into an era where reading and writing has taken a new form, one of constant growth and contribution? What if this new form molds the ideas of millions into one, multicultural web of information that is accessible to anyone on earth at any time, and any place? It’s true, maybe the common public isn’t writing some of the great masterpieces of yesteryear, but what we are doing is evolving and moving forward, redefining the way we read and write in today’s society.
But what does that mean, “redefining”? The way people read and write has been changing ever since the first pictures were scrawled on a wall with a stick, and the first drop of ink was set on parchment by candlelight. In our generation, a lot of the reading and writing people do centers around their computer, and more namely the Internet. According to Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric, our generation writes vastly more than any generation before us. This is due to the constant communication via text that everyone relies on to talk to people that aren’t right next to them. I know from my own experience the amount of text-based communication that the common teenager has to deal with daily. It is becoming more and more common to write a lengthy e-mail or message to someone in lieu of calling or meeting in person, which adds to the constant flow of reading and writing experienced everyday by the typical American. Sure, we may not be writing developed essays that enhance our understanding of rhetoric and structure everyday, but the constant practice we get from text-based communication gives us a chance to write something everyday, and, according to Lundsford, has made us especially adept to kairos, or the ability to asses the audience and adapt to that setting accordingly. Kairos may be one of most important abilities to possess in modern writing. When constructing a resume or even sitting through an interviewing, knowing whom your audience is and adjusting accordingly is one of the most important skills you could ever have. Any politician or public speaker knows the importance of this ability, and the immediate feedback that someone can now get from their Facebook post or a YouTube comment has made our generation incredibly good at it. In this sense, writing in the current era has taken a turn for the better, improving the way we communicate in general and giving us constant exposure to writing.
With that being said, I do not believe that we are becoming more advanced writers through this kind of exposure alone. With only a fraction of my own time on the web spent typing, I’ve realized the style of writing, whether it be a Facebook post or a blog entry, is not as organized and polished as a finished essay. The structure that makes a passage flow is missing, and the polished, reviewed work of a real piece is not something you normally see on an average stroll through the interwebs. However, it doesn’t worry me. In my experience, when writing a blog I let the thoughts flow out, not stopping to think of a certain structure to mold my words to. This style, as I’ve seen, is common on the Internet. But is this a bad thing? Not in my opinion. Most polished works have a sense of linearity and mechanical thought. Through the spontaneity of a blog, the emotions of that moment are captured in the words of the author, showing us a deeper, more meaningful side of the piece. This emotional perspective is another thing about writing that has evolved through the Internet, and I think that its importance is often overlooked. Compassionate writing has made strides in the past, and with this new age of writing whenever the mood strikes us, I believe many of the great works of our time will come from bursts of emotion and passion.
In Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” he says that we as a populace have turned to “skimming” through long pieces of reading, a tendency that has been brought about by the incredibly fast access to all forms of information provided by Google and the Internet in general. It’s caused us to become impatient and tuned to skip through the fatty trimmings of a reading until we get to the meat of the subject. And I would have to agree. Throughout this winter quarter I’ve found myself skimming through the articles that I’ve been assigned to read, only looking for facts or lines that could help me reach my ultimate goal of a blog post faster. This tendency has robbed me of the deeper understanding of the articles that would have come by reading the whole thing. And I think that this is an ailment that has affected a lot of people. The Internet has provided us fast access to anything we could ever want, so when we have to sit down and read an article it seems slow, even painful sometimes. Without evaluating the passages and critically thinking about them, we turn to our skimming ways to find what we really need out of the reading. And with this said, I force myself to find common ground with Hedges. In his article he stated the overwhelming tendency of Americans to vote for a representative based on their skin level motives, and not go any deeper into their true campaign motives or intentions once they’re elected. I have to agree with this point, and I must say that’s it’s frankly quite frightening. This sort of approach to matters like the election of a president could land us as a country in big trouble. All it would take is a smooth talker to land us with an extremist president, ready to take over the world. Now this is obviously a borderline ludicrous example, but it is a good point to make that not critically thinking about something could have some detrimental affects. And I must admit that the Internet and Google have made it incredibly easy to do this.
In this respect, reading has taken a hit. It has become more of a chore than a comprehensive process, and has been replaced by something much faster and more accessible. But that technology also counters its downfall by providing something of extreme usefulness that I’ve mentioned before. Access. In our very first article by Andrew Sullivan, he stated that, “Every writer since the printing press has longed for a means to publish himself and reach—instantly—any reader on Earth” (Sullivan). The Internet gives anyone and everyone the ability to do this. Blogging is probably the most ideal example imaginable. The ability to create your own web page for free and publish your writing for anyone to read has revolutionized reading. Maybe the Internet has made us stingy readers, but it’s giving us more avenues to explore practically any text we could ever want. When looking at the Internet logs of my fellow classmates, I was surprised to see a constant theme of checking news sites and reading the most interesting articles. Not only did this give me hope for our generation as a whole, but also it again furthered the point that reading has been made extremely accessible via the Internet. Skip a couple of decades back, and you would have to go out to a vendor or street side to grab a newspaper. Now, it’s as simple as typing in a website to your URL bar and you’re reading the most current events. With the development of things like the Kindle and the iPad, hundreds of books can be stored into one useful device that can be packed away in a small bag and taken anywhere. So even though some people argue that the Internet has turned us away from reading, the fact is technology has given us the means necessary to read more than ever was available in earlier generations.
As Lundsford stated, “technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it…” (Lundsford). Today’s technology has presented us with ways to read and write that have never been possible before. From reading any novel ever conceived to writing to millions upon millions of people, the Internet has taken the world of literacy to new heights, and keeps on evolving. And although the standard definition of literacy from 200 years ago may not be the best mold for today’s world, I believe we have moved forward into a new era of literacy, one that could not be possible without present technology.
Alternative Introduction Paragraph
In this paper, I’m writing to the old, the wise, and the stubborn. I believe that since the Internet has so rapidly taken over our lives, the older generation feels pushed out by the constant advancements in technology in replacement of their quiet, newspaper reading abodes. I believe that with the right reasons, these stubborn pessimists will reflect on their soon-to-be old ways and be assured that the Internet is not taking over the world of literacy. It is simply enhancing and evolving it for the better.
Works Cited
Thompson, Clive. “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”. Wired Magazine. 24 August 2009.
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic July-Aug. 2008. The Atlantic. Web. 27 Jan 2012.
Scribner, Sylvia. "Literacy in Three Metaphors." American Journal of Education 93 (1984): 6-21. Print.
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