Essay

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Stephen Guelda
ENGL 105-07
Mr. Leake
27 September 2009
Literacy and the Internet
Once there was a time when people had to walk ten miles to a library, search through rows upon rows of note cards in a card catalogue, and then drudge through page after page of a book just so they could find a little bit on information for a research paper. Things have definitely changed since those days. Now people just have to wander over to the computer desk, sit in a more often than not comfy chair, and double click on a little icon. The internet brings the whole world to anyone and everyone as long as they have a computer and an internet connection which nowadays is very rare for people not to have in the United States. The information age and the internet have allowed for people to access all the information they could ever need or want easily and efficiently. However, many people are wary of this change and wonder if the internet and everything it offers are really helping us as much as it seems. Or is the reverse happening to us? By having access to anything and everything are we losing the ability to read and write as effectively as we once did? Are we using the internet in a way where we are slowly becoming less literate and more slothful or are we the Columbus drifting slowly towards an America of the literary world?

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There are many naysayers against the use of the internet and the technology we have available to us. Many people can speak of personal experience from where they have noticed a change in their reading and writing habits since the internet started getting popular. Since the internet has shown up people like Nicholas Carr mention on how their concentration lasts a fraction of the time that it used to (Carr). Because everything on the internet is so fast paced and action packed, some people’s reading skills have taken such a toll that long essays and novels have become bothersome to read. The internet is used by a majority of the people in the United States, and it has been affecting many people. Everyone from the average person to literature majors is having difficulty. I can even notice this myself. School text books are not the most exciting thing, but I used to be able to sit down, focus, and plow through twenty or thirty pages with little effort. Now I am constantly moving around and having to refocus myself as my mind drifts to thoughts of video games and internet sites. Even as I agree that it has been affecting me, I also realize that I still can read through books and have a functional literacy. Some people like Chris Hedges will go so far as to say that our society is taking a turn for the worse because he believes our literacy problem is so injurious that we are becoming an illiterate mob of unintelligent zombies that can be controlled by those in power (Hedges). He mentions also how the internet is affecting things such as newspapers as writers on the internet are taking their place. He criticizes all the changes that are happening to our society and is blaming the internet as one of the many causes of this. However, much of the support he uses is not supported by scientific studies or proof at all. He makes some good points, but those points alone are not enough to prove anything about technology affecting our literacy.
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While Hedges makes some good points in his article, he has little proof of anything. However, Nicholas Carr provides many examples as to possibly how and why we are changing. He mentions studies from University College London that show people hardly ever read full articles or entries on the internet (Carr). He points out that we may read more today than we ever have, but the type of reading and writing that we are doing is changing from the time before the internet was around. Carr also quotes other scholars who say that we aren’t just changing the way we read and write but also the way we think. Our mind is literally changing with the internet constantly bombarding us with information and ads and everything else. One scholar Carr quotes, Maryanne Wolf, explains that writing and reading are not natural processes for people, so if we do not practice them or practice them in a different way or mind will actually shift to accommodate the changes (Carr). While this is not necessarily going to turn us illiterate, these critics point out that there are going to be some massive changes besides the ones that have already been popping up because of this new information age. Some of them are against it completely while others are just suggesting we should be careful since we are going into a new age.
However, there are some people who think that the critics are just being a little bit too paranoid. Even Carr, who is wary of the changes of the internet, says that he might be acting a little paranoid. He says that like many changes in the world, the internet may change some things but could ultimately help us out in the long run. One author who does not share the same views with the internet critics is Clive Thompson. In his article he explains how we are not becoming illiterate; we are in the midst of a literary revolution (Thompson). Things are changing
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completely. Ideals and opinions are being turned upside down as the world is changing. His article goes on to explain how people are writing so much more now than they ever did. Not only that, the arena in which we are writing is completely different. People used to always write to teachers for assignments and that was pretty much it. Nowadays people write for classes, but also they write a significant amount for things on the internet such as social networks like Facebook and MySpace, or through the exchange of emails. Also because of this his article explains how we have a much better sense of the audience we are writing for than the generations before us. We can write a lot of different styles from completely formal academic texts to the other end of the spectrum where we exclude half the letters in chatting and texting. Also many people think that texting is degrading to academic writing. Thompson cites research by Andrea Lunsford to disprove many myths about new technology hurting young writers and readers. She studied thousands of pieces of work from students at Stanford University and in all the academic writings she studied did not find any text language in them. Students today know when they need to write formally and when it is acceptable to use informal things such as texting abbreviations and emoticons (Thompson). Also in an article by Tara Brabazon, Brabazon explains how technology is treated as something new to the classroom when at one time every technique and tool was new. She says that we have to fully integrate the technology into our school and other systems and make sure that we are using it right (Brabazon).
Anything can be detrimental to peoples or societies if they are overused or used wrongly. The internet is no exception to this rule. It brings to mind when people use the saying, “everything in moderation.” We need to find a balance between the use of our technology and
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the limiting of all the new technologies; we can not become mindless addicts to the web. So I think the question is not whether there are going to be changes. There have been quite a few changes as many people have already noticed. The internet has been around in different forms for a while , and everyone is now realizing it is affecting us. The real question is what are we going to do with these changes. If we are able to find ways to integrate all the new technologies into our society in a useful manner that limits the amount of detrimental side effects we will be able to realize new things and explore uncharted waters to unlock many new technologies, ideals, and other positive things. Technology is not something that will inherently cripple our abilities. It is only if we let it control and degrade us that it will destroy what we value as literacy today. Technology can be used either as a tool to further what we already have or to replace what we have. The internet is changing the way we do things significantly in all aspects of our life.


 
Works Cited
Brabazon, Tara. "Bonfire of the Literacies? The Internet and Challenges to Literacy." EBSCO Publishing. Print.
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid." Atlantic Monthly. Print.
Hedges, Chris. "Bad Days for Newsrooms." Truthdig. Print.
Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on the New Literacy." People Magazine (2008). Print.