Clive Thompson on the New Literature

Unsurprisingly, this article is speaking of the different opinions regarding the affect of “New Technology” on our reading and writing abilities. Professor Lunsford, as stated in the article, conducted an experiment which demonstrated that “technology isn’t killing our ability to write [rather] it’s reviving it”. Lunsford statement is one of the seemingly few that disagree with people like Sutherland who claims “technology is to blame. Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering, video and PowerPoint have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has dehydrated language into bleak, bald, sad shorthand.” This new technology does have us writing more than the people before this time were. With constantly changing statuses, texting and iming, we constantly need to write as if we are talking to a certain audience (in a way) forcing us to observe our ways of writing and even improving it. Obviously, however, the writing we do is not always academic writing, so there is a difference, but only because of the formatting. When we’re writing, with this new technology, we’re not being forced to write in a certain way or think in a certain way, we can express ourselves in a way that we want, making us want to write more. Besides, we do always hear that practice makes perfect, so why not take advantage of our different options?

Discussion Questions

1. How much practice in writing is New Media really giving us?

2. Is it wrong to think that we are really getting practice, or is it leading us towards bad writing habits?

3. Does Clive Thompson bring something different than what other writers have said about the topic?