Extended Essay

Matt Jarvis

Dr. Leake

1/30/11

I wrote this essay to inform people of my age what technology is doing to our generation. I specifically focus on the Internet and how it is changing our reading and writing habits. I present both sides of the issue, giving personal anecdotes and factual evidence to help my audience relate to the issues.

            Today, there are more people using the Internet now more than ever. We have entered a new area of endless digital knowledge and instant gratification.  Any question can be answered in a matter of seconds and social communication is as simple as typing words on a keyboard. The Internet, in some respects, is becoming a gateway or a portal into an entirely different world where efficiency and immediacy are commonplace. As our time spent on the Internet increases, aspects of our society are starting to change and sometimes mimic the way we interact with the Internet. Books and newspapers are disappearing and are being replaced with Smartphones and laptops. Why carry a book around when you can carry a lighter and much more useful Ipad? Why would you pick up a USA Today newspaper from a bookstore when you can look at the headlines for CNN, New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal in less than three minutes on your computer?

Is this change necessarily good for us? It is becoming apparent to many that it is altering the way we read and write, but this itself presents great controversy.

            I think that a little over half the reading I do every day is done over the Internet. Even as I am writing this paper, I have an Internet browser open with several of my sources. From Facebook to checking my grades online, the Internet is consuming several aspects of my life. However, I find the wealth of information that is available online is very useful. I feel as though everything I do online (except social media) is benefiting the way I do things making life more efficient and easier.

            The Internet today is forcing users like me to be much more active readers and writers. Whether it is online shopping or responding to a comment on Facebook, we are forced to think and react in an efficient manner, just as the Internet does (Forbes). Rand Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University, notes that the structure of books do not correlate with real life situations whereas the Internet does saying, “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”(NYT)

            As aforementioned, the Internet is changing the way we think. Our minds are being programmed to become active and efficient, only selecting important information to process. A study conducted by Andrea Lunsford of Stanford University suggests that our excessive Internet use is causing a, “literacy revolution” (Thompson, 2009). In the study, she collected thousands of pieces of writing from college students from text messages to formal essays. Lunsford found that young adults today are writing much more than previous generations of young people. This high exposer to writing through many different mediums is proving to be an advantage to these students. Today, students are almost always writing to a specific audience. Because of this, they are able to easily identify their audience and adjust their writing technique to best convey their point across (Thompson, 2009).

            This new generation of active, efficient, and intelligent authors is giving birth to a new medium of writing that allows for creative expression and deep personal thought. The Blog is becoming a popular way in which young people express their thoughts and opinions and the rate at which people are using it is growing exponentially.

For the first time at the beginning of this year, I created and began using a blog for my college writing class. Immediately I gained this sense of freedom from blogging; I was no longer bound by the strict guidelines set by a teacher as I was essentially allowed to express my opinion whenever I wished. However this freedom was very intimidating. I struggled at first, not knowing what to type as I was afraid of the negative scrutiny that I could receive. Presenting my personal beliefs to any user on the web was scary and something I was initially not too fond of. But as time went on and as I continued to read blogs from other students in my class, I started to become comfortable with the idea. It allowed me to gain different perspectives from classmates and it also showed me how many of us thought along the same lines.

            Andrew Sullivan, one of the web’s most well known bloggers, wrote an article called Why I Blog, in which he answered the title within the text. Sullivan has a similar feeling to blogging that I do. He compares it to taking a narcotic, calling it, “intoxicatingly free.”(Sullivan, 2008).  The fact that a blogger can instantly reach any reader fascinates Sullivan. There are no editors or bosses that his writing must go in order to be approved, the only people he has to answer to are his readers. Although this provides massive amounts of freedom, it is also a risk the blogger must take. Because blogging is more of a broadcast rather than a publication, criticism of that piece of writing can be a lot more hurtful because the writing will contain more opinionated and subjective matter (Sullivan, 2008). Blogs are just another creative outlet that the Net has created. A new freer form of writing

 Spawned from efficiency and instant gratification, the Internet is beginning to make fundamental changes to our reading and writing habits. Active and efficient reading is promoted by the sporadic and diverse nature of the Internet. Social media is causing college students to write more and as a result demonstrate their audience awareness through their academic papers. And the creation of the blog is an example of how our reading and writing habits are being changed because of the Internet.

Although these instances demonstrate the positive influences that the Net can have on our brains and society, these same examples can be viewed as detrimental. It is an increasing concern among some scientists and writers that greater Internet media use is leading to poor reading and writing habits.

Many of those people who believe in this side of the debate argue that the instant gratification and efficiency promoted by the Internet is actually causing us to process information like the Internet, “scatter[ing] our attention and diffuse[ing] our concentration” (Carr, 2008). I can say with certainty that there have been many instances where I have been reading and then suddenly realize that I have just read two or three paragraphs without registering what I just read. Nicholas Carr identifies the same example saying that he now finds it difficult to read longer pieces of text in “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. Carr also notes how social media and Internet use are phasing out “deep reading”, which in turn is phasing out deep thinking. As our brains become more mechanical alongside the Internet, so will our thought process (Carr, 2008). Ken Pugh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Yale says, “Reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more cognitively enriching, without doubt, than the short little bits that you might get if you’re into the 30-second digital mode.” (NYT)

            By slowly eliminating our deep thinking, the Internet may also be hindering our ability to make educated and well thought out decisions. Hedge’s points out a startling study conducted by The Princeton Review in “America the Illiterate” that really shows the problem of low-level thinking. The study reviewed presidential debate transcripts and indicated the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the debate. The results showed that political rhetoric is becoming increasingly easier for the public to understand. Lincoln and Douglas had scores that indicated that they spoke at a 12^th grade level whereas Bush and Gore had scores that indicated that they spoke at around a 7^th grade level (Hedges, 2008). Hedge’s also notes how political propaganda today must have an, “emotional appeal,” to its audience, often using pathos instead of hard facts and logical reasoning to persuade voters. Is this partially the result of social media and Internet use? Is our society more influenced by appearance than logic?

            In some respects, I believe that our Internet driven era is leading us this way. People are not looking to find deeper meaning in their Internet use. Everything must happen fast and as soon as possible. There is no time to stop and think about it. Our quest for knowledge and efficiency is eliminating our thoughtful reasoning that we have developed since the advent of books.

            What might happen to upcoming generations who will spend their entire life’s using and interacting with the Internet? Are they at risk of having minds that are too efficient to process deep information, or are they redefining what reading and writing should be? I cannot say for sure what I believe. However I think it is crucial for our generation and generations that follow to understand what is at stake here. What are our solutions? I’m not sure of this either, but we can start by recognizing the argument. 

Reflection

Blogging, for the most part, has not been difficult. The most challenging thing for me was being able to put myself out there, expressing my personal opinions and allowing anyone to read and comment on them. I’m almost relieved that no one has ripped me apart yet. Even though this was my least favorite part of the blog, it was probably the most interesting. I enjoy exploring all my classmates’ blogs after making a post. Reading some of their opinions definitely gave me a new perspective of the issue at hand and sometimes made me rethink what I wrote in my blog.

I think that my web habits, for the most part, will go unchanged. I do agree with Carr and Hedges, but as a college student I do not believe that I am abusing the Internet to the point where it will severely alter the way I think. I often find myself losing concentration while reading, but it has yet to become a problem where I’m concerned about it. That still doesn’t mean that I am skeptical of the Internet. These last couple weeks have convinced me that instant gratification is becoming more of a foe than friend. Yes it makes life much more efficient, but it has the capability to alter the way we think to the extent that it may be damaging to us personally and socially.

I think that my attitude toward reading and writing habits on the web has stayed about the same. I still feel that social media is doing more bad for our generation than good. 

bLoG ocho

            How does one define the term “literacy”? For such a small word, it can take on a number of meanings. It seems that it would be very easy for someone to write numerous pages defining “literacy”, explaining why it is important and what it means within society.

            I find that Scribner does an excellent job in doing exactly this. Although it is an academic piece, he is able to break it up into three different aspects in which the audience can relate to. The first is “literacy as an adaptation”. It is essentially the fundamental skills a reader must have in order to succeed in everyday life. Hedge’s article is similar to this aspect of Scribner’s article because both authors are attempting to stress the importance of understanding text beyond a basic level. The second is literacy as power. In other words, this is saying the power a literate society has to make a change. Again, one can relate this back to Hedge’s article, specifically the part on the grade level at which presidential debate can be understood at.  A more literate society can make better-educated decisions when it comes to voting for a political leader. The third is literacy as a state of grace. This is probably my favorite metaphor of the three. Literacy allows a reader to expand on a complex thought and from that develop opinions and morals.

            Thompson’s article does an excellent job presenting what social media can do for literacy. He sites a respectable study conducted by Professor Lunsford of Stanford University. However, I am a bit skeptical of this study. By only analyzing by writing college students the study is only specific to one demographic of our society. I would hope that college students would be able to identify and write to a specific audience because America would have a serious problem if our college students could not accomplish this. I think if the study looked at a different demographic, like people of lower socio-economic status who can’t afford college, then maybe the results would be much different and would correlate to Carr’s idea of internet use. But don’t get me wrong here; I think the study is correct in the fact that our literacy habits are evolving. However, I think it is evolving for those who are interested in and fairly involved in academia. 

blog7

To start off, this entire article is troubling. Every statistic that Hedges’s used is very startling. As surprising as these facts are to me, I have been aware of America’s illiteracy problem for quite some time. But I had no idea that it was this bad. It is easy to throw out percentage or fractional statistics, but what really surprised me was how Hedges said that presidential debates are slowing and becoming easy enough for a fifth grader to understand. It is also troubling to think that last year eighty percent of families in this nation did not buy one book. There is a good chance that within that eighty percent, there lays a child that will someday become a political leader.

            Today, the majority of the United States is, “informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés” according to Hedges. Is this a result of the Internet once again? Carr informed us that there are many distractions available while surfing the Internet, causing our mind to jump from one thing to another. I think that the Internet is to blame. It seems as though the only way that people are informed now is mainly through visual and emotional connections to the subject matter. Political propaganda today uses pathos to persuade its audience as well as basic visual representations of things to get their point across instead of intellectual and statistical persuasion. Our society is starting to turn its focus towards the importance of appearance. It is easy to point the finger at the Internet, so I am. To me, it almost seems too obvious not to blame our Internet.

What is this saying about our society? How are we (as a generation) supposed to change this? What may this do to our country in the future?

Sorry kids but Google is making us stupid :-/

As useful as a tool that Google is, I do believe it is making us  “stupid” according to Carr’s definition. Carr notes how our current types of Internet media supplies the “stuff of thought” and how this media “shapes the stuff of thought”. This is, in a nutshell, what Carr believes is making us stupid by using the Internet. He points out several correlations between the mind and how it works with the web, which I completely agree with. By using the Net on a regular basis, we are making our mind move swiftly and efficiently, just as the web does. Reading a text is no longer a drawn out process that requires elaborate thought and evaluation. The Internet and Google have transformed our brains into efficient tools that are searching for the correct answer. As a result, our brains are now skimming pieces of writing available on the Internet which is causing people to have a shorter attention span when it comes to reading any kind of literature. I can honestly say that I have often found myself reading a longer article online and taking a little break because I don’t have the patience to finish it in one sitting. The Internet is constantly having our brains switch focus from one thing to another. This allows our brains to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration, according to Carr.

            It is almost funny how blogs mimic and almost promote this type of thought process. This type of writing has a great deal of freedom, allowing the writer to jump from topic to topic whenever he or she pleases. The author has no guidelines or boundaries to follow, just as an Internet user has while on Google. The world has endless amount of information that we can tap into at any time, and in a sense, it is very similar to writing a blog. The writer can tap into the thought he or she has and run with it until they are done.

“Deep reading is indistinguishable from deep reading” – Maryanne Wolf