Reading and Writing on the Web: Roughdraft

So here is my roughdraft of the first extended essay on literacy and the Internet. I pretty much just did a free write and limited revision and editing, so it needs alot of work.

literacy article

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B87_MhwIgbuLOWM1ZTQ4ZDAtMDg5Yi00YTVkLTg5ZjctNzBkYTBkODFlZmUx&hl=en

This article caught my attention mostly because it focuses on an analyzation of the new literacy studies. It seemed interesting because it deals with cognitive development and new literacy.

The Intellectual Recession (P7)

(I was trying to edit this post and accidently deleted it...so here it is again.)

In the article ‘America the Illiterate’, Chris Hedges makes the statement that America’s population is divided into two groups rapidly becoming uneven in number: the literate and the illiterate; and surprisingly the one that’s growing by 2 million a year isn’t the literate one. He says that the group of literates as a whole is “a minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth.” Hedges also says that the other group of Americans “dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information” can’t tell the difference from lie or truth.

The most profound point made in this article that stood out to me was the bit of statistics given about literacy in America. I guess that I have lately just assumed that we were advancing and improving our statistics as a country, so learning that in something as important as literacy we were actually slowly falling behind was rather unsettling to me.

Carr’s thoughts in ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ can easily relate to Hedge’s article. They both discuss negative impacts the internet has had. This alone makes them unique because a tool that has helped us so much as a society is usually not analyzed in a negative light. Though Carr’s article is a bit more argumentative, they both present strong evidence for ways that the internet has been a hindrance to our society intellectually. This is a very unique perspective of a tool that was developed recently as a new technology to ease everything about communication and retrieval of information.

I found this article very thought provoking. I’ve never looked at something as common and widely used as the internet as a possible cause for the slow “intellectual recession” America is experiencing due to the simple lack of a real need for Carr’s idea of literacy in modern America. Everything is so simplified and altered now that our values, like, as said by Carr, “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 becoming much less common.

My Blogging Experience

When I first heard that we were going to keep blogs as a class assignment, I'll admit I was (and still am) a little skeptical of how well I would do with this. I’d never written a blog, or really read any, prior to this course, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. It took a few posts to adjust to the whole idea of blogging: putting your ideas out where everyone (..well, our class anyway..) can see and judge them. Having now written a few blogs, I’m actually very glad that I got to have this experience with blogging.

I have learned more about writing responses to articles and forming sound opinions on the topics. I’ve always had some trouble with putting together my thoughts and opinions in a logical manner, especially in writing; I know what I think or how I feel about a topic, but how to word it in a reasonably intelligent manner is usually rather difficult. Knowing that everyone can read what I write, rather than just the professor as is most often the case, added a little pressure to writing the blogs, but I think blogging is ultimately easier than turning in formal essays and such.

It was kind of surprising to me that it wasn't more difficult to write some of these blogs. Though starting them off was sometimes reasonably difficult, once I began writing, it was easier than I expected. This is probably because the whole process of blogging seemed less formal than submitting papers for class. For me, it seemed that posting class assignments on the Internet in a blog was easier because in some aspects the Internet has already become kind of a personal outlet for thoughts and ideas.

The simplest way in which my web habits have changed is that I have been spending a little more time on the Internet- reading and taking notes on the articles; writing, posting, and reading blogs; looking up things relative to our readings. Other than this though, I did attempt to pay more attention to articles on the web for a while instead of simply using the Internet as a distraction from things I should be doing. However, I quickly fell back into my old habits for the most part, with the only alteration being that I am more conscious of how I spend my time on the Internet.

Internet vs. Newspaper: Opinion vs. Fact

In his article ‘Bad Days for Newsrooms’, Chris Hedges says that the Internet is “strangling” newspapers. People just get on the internet and browse the newspapers’ websites or get information from the internet and bloggers. He elaborates on his belief that newspapers are unfortunately being replaced by stating that most reporting is done through newspapers and wire services and with that being shut down, we now have bloggers and biased internet sites to get our information from.

When people get their information from the internet instead of the news, we get everything “filtered through an ideological lens,” Hedges states, and that just reinforces our beliefs, instead of giving us the straight facts. I think we need some source of pure information, other than everyone going and hearing biased and skewed stories and believing it as fact instead of opinion.

Another problem that he pointed out was that “the rise of our corporate state has done the most, however, to decimate traditional news-gathering.” Big corporations, like Time Warner and Viacom, control what we read, hear and see and they aren’t concerned with society getting the real news because that doesn’t benefit them in any way. Hedges put this in very interesting words in his article: “[Corporations] hate news, real news. Real news is not convenient to their rape of the nation. Real news makes people ask questions.”

Clive Thompson’s ‘New Literacy’ was an intriguing contrast to Hedges articles on the Internet. While Hedges seemed to only attack the internet and it’s effect on our literacy and the newspaper, Thompson gave us a reason why the internet has proved useful. His point that the internet is simply changing the way we think about writing and actually making us write more often was well supported with the studies by Andrea Lunsford on writing. I think that, even though they discussed slightly different topics involving the internet, Thompson’s ideas were more strongly supported and logical sounding than Hedges’ articles.

Stupidity, Impatience,...or Neither?

[Just as a kind of side note: I found it extremely ironic that before I knew what the article was going to discuss, I checked the length of the article and started to skim, until I noticed that the focus of the article was about how our reading habits have been spoiled in this way by the internet…]

From what I gathered from the article ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’, Nicholas Carr doesn’t necessarily think that “Google” (or the internet in general) is making us stupid, but perhaps that it is changing everything about the way we think. Possibly the internet's immediacy and availability of information has simply spoiled us to the point where we can't wait to read an entire article thats more than a page long. Carr seemed to kind of present both the positive and negative effects of this change internet has caused on our methods of reading. In some parts, he made it sound as though literature was being ruined – “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” Carr also told of a blogger, Scott Karp, who admitted that he doesn’t even read books anymore.

Though he mainly portrayed the internet as a negative influence on our reading skills, he seemed to make a few points that could be considered positive changes to our methods of reading. When he compared the change technology is causing today to the change that the written word had in Socrates’ time it seemed that he was suggesting that maybe we just haven’t seen the benefits of the changes in our reading habits, like Socrates didn’t see the advantages of written word.

Our class’ internet habits seemed to play into Carr’s point that we have a very short attention span when reading and hardly any critical thinking goes into our readings, especially on the internet. Many of us had many tabs and windows open at once, doing multiple things by jumping back and forth through webpages. This relates to Carr’s idea that the internet has become a means to “scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.”

Harris' Ideas on Writing: Rewriting

In the first two chapters of Harris’ Rewriting, he defines reading and writing as he sees it. His idea of writing is that we draw off of the ideas of others in our own writing; he calls it rewriting. The process of writing, as interpreted from Harris’ introduction, includes drawing from others’ ideas, commenting on such ideas, and adding to previously given ideas. Harris believes that “intellectuals almost always write in response to the work of others”. He seems to be saying in the introduction that the most difficult part of writing is figuring out what and how to add to the work of others that you have read.

An interesting point that I thought about in Harris’ introduction was that reading could almost be considered simply a precursor to writing if you look at it from Harris’ point of view. If we write almost always in response to other writers, then isn’t reading just the first step to writing? It could be considered just the gathering of more ideas and further analysis of ideas already presented.

In the chapter Coming to Terms, Harris presents additional thought to what reading is. “Texts don’t simply reveal their meanings to us; we need to make sense of them.” Here, he emphasizes the point that reading involves serious analyzation to fully comprehend each idea in the text and to write about or respond to these ideas.

One of the first connections I drew between Harris’ and Sullivan’s ideas on writing was that they both portrayed writing as a type of commentary or response to something in a way. Both authors were related in the way they seemed to view writing in that they described writing as always involving or being influenced by outside sources or purposes. Harris stated that nearly all writing was in response to other writing and Sullivan gave the idea that writing (or blogging) is like a newsfeed, commenting on current events and beliefs for the most part.

Similar Yet Unique

Upon reading the assignment of recording all the websites we visited and then comparing notes, I thought everyone would have a rather unique list of visited sites. It seems that we all have nearly the same uses for the internet these days: getting information and communicating – everyone had some form of these websites listed in their log.

After seeing the websites that were visited, I think it’s safe to say that one thing everyone had in common was an email website and social networking websites. Almost everyone had checked an email website, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail and a social website, mainly Facebook, but also some Myspace and Twitter. Our class’ overall internet habits were extremely similar, as well: check an email website, check a social website, and then some looked up news or entertainment website. Most of us also had a personal interest website that was for the most part unique to our log of websites, like photography, music, or shopping. This was the only thing that made our internet activity different from others’ really. Our habits online have become rather predictable: Facebook, email, and other entertainment.

The odd thing is that when we’re on the internet, it seems kind of personal, yet everyone has almost the same experience when they get online. Your own profiles or accounts, your own settings, and navigation of your browser totally under your control makes it somewhat personal, but everyone else (especially those in your age group) does basically the same thing on the same websites. What websites a person visits apart from the normal group of websites can tell a lot about someone- hobby, interests, sport, favorite music genre, or personality characteristics.

How to Waste Time...

Step 1: Spend entirely too much time on social networking websites.
Step 2: Look up random songs and videos, instead of looking up articles for class.
Step 3: Download Skype and waste hours video chatting.

Lately I have found it nearly impossible to get anything important done when I’m online with distractions like Skype, Facebook, and Youtube…So, anyway, here’s my past two days of internet habits.

Basically when I’m online I have 3 or 4 windows open and switch between them instead of just doing one thing at a time, so posting times or when I visited each site would be kind of confusing. Also, my internet habits were a little different this weekend because I went­­­­ home and didn’t have internet access on my laptop. Usually I would get on Youtube a few times and check out www.dpreview.com for new stuff af least once…

Day 1:
-Log on to Yahoo! Mail: Deleted 117 pointless emails from Facebook notifications, sorted through a bunch of spam and realized that none of the 129 new emails were anything that I wanted to read…
-Switched over to Facebook: read notifications & messages, answered comments, and chatted
-U of L: checked email & Blackboard for announcements
-Playlist.com: listened to music while checking email & chatting on Facebook

Day 2:
-Facebook: checked notifications, answered comments, and chatted
-Myspace: okay, so maybe I’m the only person over 15 that still uses this, but I’ll admit...I check it every once in a while
-U of L: checked school email & Blackboard
-Forever21.com: my new bad habit…online shopping.
-Yahoo: logged on, saw that I had a million new e-mails…decided to deal with it later...

"Online Disc Jockey"

Everything about our culture today is becoming immediate and increasingly fast-paced. We become impatient after waiting 3 minutes for a meal at fast-food restaurant, when it could take up to an hour to make a hamburger and French fries at home. People used to have to sail on ships for weeks to get to places that we can now hop on a plane and fly to within hours. Our society today seems to just need everything to be available instantaneously. This relates to the main reason Andrew Sullivan states that he blogs: it fits in with our need for immediacy. He says, “For bloggers, the deadline is always now.” Sullivan seems to be drawn to the ability to post about things as they are happening. For example, he says that he shared the experience of the attack on the World Trade Centers on September 11th and his reaction to it as it happened, through his blog. (“There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivaled by print.”)
Another aspect of blogging that has appealed to Sullivan is the intimacy of blogs. “You feel as if you know bloggers as they go through their lives, experience the same things you are experiencing, and share the moment.” Blogging is so current that it creates this personal feeling, as if discussing reactions to things happening as they happen with a friend, like a sports commentator, watching the situation and taking it all in, while discussing what is happening in the moment. Sullivan says that the writer and reader create an “intimate bond” because it’s two people alone at a computer: connected by the sharing of thoughts, news, or ideas.
One of my favorite statements that Sullivan made was “There are times, in fact, when a blogger feels less like a writer than an online disc jockey, mixing samples of tunes and generating new melodies through mashups while also making his own music. He is both artist and producer—and the beat always goes on.” I think this is a great expression of how he views blogging, as well as a very creative, unique comparison.
So why does Andrew Sullivan blog? To put it briefly, I gathered from his article “Why I Blog” that the answer to this is because he enjoys the combination of immediacy, intimacy, and creativity allowed by blogging. Blogging is unique in that no other form of writing seems to be able to offer this combination of defining aspects and advantages.