Essay #1: Revised

This essay was written primarily to our class. My essay is tailored this way because I say things such as “The article we read in class.” Only people in our class would understand that because I don’t say in Andrew Sullivan’s article, Why I Blog, which we read in class, I simply reference Sullivan’s article and it’s implied from the knowledge of our class that everyone knows what I'm talking about. This essay is also geared more towards young people. I don’t use as formal of a tone as I would if I'm writing a paper on the Supreme Court lifetime tenure like I did earlier in the year. I wrote it in a more relaxed tone because I feel it flows better.

The other night I was watching Sportscenter before going to bed and I heard something that caught my ear. Reporters in the studios were talking about how at this weekends upcoming NFL Pro Bowl; players would be allowed to tweet during the game. I'm envisioning the following post from Aaron Rodgers after coming off the field, “Just threw a 46 yard touchdown pass, nice catch Greg. #NFCRULES” To me this exception to allow players to tweet during the game shows the types of writers we are becoming. Our writing isn’t the only thing that has been changing recently. With modern advances in the last ten years of the Internet, we are now relying on it more than ever for a lot of our information. It’s easy to use, and doesn't take long to search. Carr uses a metaphor to describe the way the Internet has changed, he says, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski” (1). Overall, I believe that due to the new age of technology, we have become more frequent, but not necessarily better writers, and worse readers for the time being because we have not yet adapted to the way information is intercepted.

            Of the readings we did in class, two writers in particular had the viewpoint that with the new age of technology our writing is improving and can only get better. These writers were Andrew Sullivan and Clive Thompson. Andrea Lunsford was featured in Thompson’s article for her research with the writing of freshman at Stanford University. Thompson references her research when he states, “The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That's because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text” (Thompson 1). Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and any other networking site for that matter let’s someone instantly post what they are thinking, whenever they want. It’s ingenious, these sites have realized that teens want an outlet where they can publicly display what’s on their mind to an audience of their friends and family. Another result she found was:

The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago. The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing (Thompson 1).

She elaborated that because students almost always write to an audience, when they had to write in class and only to their professor they found it boring and useless. Students don’t enjoy writing only to a teacher; we are the writers of the future. We write short, concise, audience based pieces of writing. If a professor also reads and grades it for class that only helps. Academic writing is shifting away from formal essays that are turned in with a cover page and towards blog entries that are graded on a regular basis.

            Rather than using a social networking site to get his thoughts read on the web, Andrew Sullivan _­takes a different approach, an approach where no friend request needs to be accepted. He uses a blog as his way of communicating with an audience, and a very popular one at that. Blog are a useful tool for anyone who loves to write. Sullivan writes of his experience, “The simple experience of being able to directly broadcast my own words to readers was an exhilarating literary liberation. Unlike the current generation of writers, who have only ever blogged, I knew firsthand what the alternative meant” (Sullivan 3). The alternative he's referring to is print media, because he has been an editor and is currently a writer. I couldn’t agree more with what he said. There is a pretty big difference from his audience of millions of readers and my audience of fourteen class members, but it’s the same feeling of knowing what you just wrote is being read by someone. Sullivan describes blogging as an extreme sport, and once again I know how he feels. Although I'm assuming when he writes his blog, its not in a word document like mine were, but the instant publication after I’ve finished in a word document is a small rush of nervousness and excitement. As Sullivan states, “And the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater” in relation to posting entries in a timely manner. Sullivan posts very often to his blog, which is part of the extremeness. If you don’t keep posting, people will lose interest. In essence, once you start, you can never stop. Sullivan explains:

You can’t have blogger’s block. You have to express yourself now, while your emotions roil, while your temper flares, while your humor lasts. You can try to hide yourself from real scrutiny, and the exposure it demands, but it’s hard. And that’s what makes blogging as a form stand out: it is rich in personality (Sullivan 5).

Because we can use new technology, our writing can become interesting to anyone who is willing to read it. It’s not hard to find, and there’s no shortage of it on the web. Technology has made us into instant writers. I see this as a positive change because there will always be someone out there who is writing that you can relate to, all it takes it the patience and interest to sit down and read it.

            As positive as Thompson and Sullivan are about writing, there are others that we read in class that don’t feel the same way. Hedges and Carr see the Internet as a possible risk, specifically, Hedges, views the Internet as a major roadblock in our intellectual development. He states:

 The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying (Hedges 3).

None of this however, can possibly happen from using the Internet too much. The ability to think for ones self and to distinguish between truth and lie, are human traits. They are hardwired into our brains from the time we are very little. No such study has been proven that the Internet can destroy our neurological paths. The Internet cannot take away a trait that has been inherently humanistic for hundreds of years; it’s biology, humans cannot evolve that quickly. Hannah Arendt was featured in Hedges’s article for saying, “Culture, is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment” (Hedges 3). When I read this, I was a little bit confused, mainly because culture cannot be destroyed; it’s the customs that people do on a regular basis. Meaning, if people decide to shift away from their old customs and more towards new ones of being entertained, then the culture of that group of people has changed, not been destroyed. Spending prolonged periods of time using Internet cannot take away culture and stop us from making decisions that humans have been making pretty much since the beginning of modern society. Hedges doesn’t consider the fact that we are about to turn the corner on a new age of technology, and that the way we think is going to change. This doesn’t mean out with the old and in with the new, it simply means the new is going to mesh with the old and create a new way of thinking. It’s just too early to see how that is going to change and because of this Hedges seems like a skeptic of the Internet.

            Nicholas Carr makes a much less harsh argument towards how the Internet impacts our ability to be better readers. At times, he questions his own thoughts to if something like this can possibly true. I believe he makes some very convincing points about the Internet, however, where we differ is I believe that humans will adapt and change to become more efficient readers when using the Internet, he does not show the same faith. To show the massive reach that the Internet has over our lives he states, “The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV” (Carr 4). This is all true, but not the end of the world. The Internet will likely take over print media in most places and many inventions that we knew to be useful will cease to be popular, but there will always be people who feel like doing it the old fashioned way. People who pick up a phone and dial home, or read the Sunday Paper cover to cover. As for the rest of us, we will have to adapt to the new way media is given to the public, mainly through the Internet. No one knows what types of readers we will become, but everyone is making wild assumptions of the unknown. Carr explains the types of readers we currently are. He says:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle (Carr 1).

Our attention spans are shortening, but I know we have the ability to change the way we read. We are the types readers, and more importantly people, who have the capability to learn new things and always find interest in topics. We will never become the dreaded “Pancake people” that Carr mentions in his article because people will always be curious. Curiosity did kill the cat, but yeast is what makes bread rise. The Internet is our yeast, it will allow us to rise above the stereotypes that authors, such as Carr, give us and allow us to access more knowledge than we could have ever imagined.

              Literary critics fear that the new age of technology, specifically advances in the Internet, is changing the way we read and write. It’s true; the evolution of the Internet has created an evolution of language that many see as the downfall of American literacy and intellectualism, but I see it a different way. The progressions in the Internet are an opportunity for Americans to adapt to the new ways technology will influence our lives. Changes in the way we write are already apparent from how much we write. Changes in the way we read will take much longer to show up since humans are in a transitional period. The transition that is taking place from print media to electronic news is just beginning. The way we read and write is changing, but this is a good thing. It will once again show that humans have the ability to adapt in any situation.