Reading Response 1

In the article “On the New Literature” by Clive Thompson he states that the youth of today is starting a writing revolution unseen since the ancient Greek nation. He believes based on a study conducted by Andrea Lundsford at Stanford that the texting and online social networking sites are helping to reinforce peoples love for writing. The study that was conducted was of some 14,000 pieces of writing that students wrote over the school year. The study indicated that there were no signs of text language and also that the students liked writing for and audience that is someone other than their teacher and that 38% of their writing took place out of the classroom. There are nay Sayers that say the internet is making our writing “bleak, bland and shorthand”, but the study proves otherwise. Thompson says “young people today write far more than any generation before them”. This is astounding because the past 2 centuries were thought of as literarily significant ages. Older generations are always giving our youth a tough time for not reading and doing anything with our lives yet this does not seem true. The students find writing for more than one person as their audience better than just writing for their professor is not as good but do it for the grade. Thompson does say that good teaching will always be a necessity to help the new creative minds along in their writing. The article shows that people are learning more from the internet and the better and more revolutionary ways of writing that rivals the Greek revolution.

From the writing it seems that Thompson sees the new revolution of online society to be a good thing, as he compares the generation to the Greek civilization, one of the more advanced for its time in knowledge and understanding, 2 times directly. I believe that what Thompson is saying is the truth, the internet is reviving peoples writing and their actual like for it. I do admit that the internet and the excessive use of it can be detrimental to a person if overused or used for non intellectual things. I still uphold that the internet is more helpful and useful than it is disadvantageous to us. For example when Thompson says that Lundsford didn’t “find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper”. This shows that the students are learning in the classroom and on the chat rooms and combining the two ways without actually combing any words. On the other side of the argument people still state that these forms of internet chat are making people less likely to do well at academic papers. As the quote I used earlier of Jon Sutherland that our writing is degenerating and becoming awful. This article is significant because it proves that the retorts of how the internet is making people dumb can be proved wrong through this study. The people are learning more and more from the internet although most of it is not really direct but learned through implication.