Clive Thompson by Emily M.

In his recent work, Clive Thompson suggests that our new technological way of online writing, and texting is actually increasing our want to write. Professor John Sutherland disagrees with this. He states that "texting has dehydrated language into "bleak, bald, sad shorthand"(1), as well as suggesting that kids today can't write and technology is to blame(1). Clive Thompson also introduces us to Andrea Lunsford who takes what Sutherland has said and thrown it away with her multiple examples of why hes wrong. Ms. Lunsford comes forward saying that "technology isn't killing our ability to write. Its reviving it- and pushing our literacy in bold, new directions" (3).
After reading Clive Thompson's writing on "the New Literacy", I myself thought about how Lunsford and Sutherland both share an equally right opinion. As i view myself in this new generation of texting as a second nature, i realize how much i actually do write. You don't think about how many of those Myspace surveys about your life you fill out, or how many texts you send each day, or how many Facebook updates you post in one week. Although Lunsford's studies have shown that we don't use SMS Text in our academic papers(7), it seems to me that our youth has the most at stake here. They are writing papers, but with the internet so close at hand they can so easily take right from another author without thinking twice. When Sutherland states "texting has dehydrated language to "bleak, bald, and boring shorthand"(1), i can't agree with him more. Who really likes getting texts saying something in shorthand that is hard to understand. I admit that i give into the IDK, IDC, B/C, SMS every once in a while.
To me Clive Thompson is basically summarizing that we use short hand words to express what we are feeling in a text message, a LOL or a =D, but although texting has become a second nature, we can still write like civilized individuals. Also that we really don't realize how much we do write outside of class. When Lunsford states "before the internet came along most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment"(5). We do most of our writing on the computer, mostly without even realizing how much writing is actually going into what we're doing. Lastly a must in our generation's writing today is knowing the purpose of why your writing what you are and who you're writing for.