Revolution of Writing or Regression?

In Clive Thompson’s article about writing and my generation, he asks the question about whether or not our generation is worse off because of texting, blogs, and the Internet. To help with his theory that we are better off, he quotes the findings from Andrea Lunsford, a Stanford Professor. In her 5 year long study using nearly 14,672 samples of writing ranging from texts to formal essays, Thompson concludes, “For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.” Furthermore, Lunsford believes that this is the biggest revolution in writing since the ancient Greeks.

            Not only does Thompson and Lunsford believe this is a new age of writing, in a positive way, Sylvia Scriber begins her article with, “Although literacy is a problem of pressing national concern, we have yet to discover or set its boundaries.” She believes that writing does not need to be strict or straightforward. She believes it is ambiguous. She writes that writing is a “Social” achievement; therefore, it needs to be shared between people like through blogs, texts, and tweets. Not dusty old thesis’s disproving why frogs and toads are different.

            Furthermore, while both Scribner and Thompson agree on the limitless bounds of writing, both also agree that is both social writing like texts and blogs are of equal importance to school essays. However, it isn’t the schools job to enforce the necessity of writing, because we do it each day regardless if we want to but to reinforce certain aspects of “good” writing, like grammar, and structure.

            In comparison to both of these articles, last weeks articles by Hedge’s and Carr were of the opposite belief. They both believed as we delve further into this era of technology and the Internet we will lose all forms of “good” writing, and they argued we were less literate than previous years.

            In my mind, I agree that we are losing “good” writing like literary essay’s, classical novels, and older forms of text. However, that is not to say that we are any less literate or intelligent for using our new forms of writing like texts and blogs. I agree that this is a new age or writing, but proper writing should still be used and taught to students, so that it is not lost to time and history for future generations.