Literacy Fear Not the Machine

During the viewing of Michael Wesch’s “The Machines are us/ing Us” and the reading of Clive Thompson’s “The New Literacy” I came across some very interesting notes, connections and questions. For example in “The New Literacy” I read that in an experiment to test whether text messaging, social networking and other digital forms of communication affects someone’s writing skills. In the experiment it showed that 38% of a student’s writing was done outside a school through such digital forms. In the YouTube video, it touched on the difference in between digital and physical, pen-to-paper, writing. Something else I read in Thompson’s article was the same professor who did the last experiment, examined the first year students more in depth and noticed not one grammatical error that resembled “text talk.” In the video, I had a connection when it was talking about html. In my Tech Studies class, I am studying web design and have been making several html web pages. Probably the most interesting thing I read was about how the same professor stated that we are in the midst of a literacy revolution like we haven’t seen since Ancient Greece. To be a part of a change in writing, which is still such a huge part of school life, is actually really cool in my opinion. Throughout the whole article, I didn’t find an fact or opinion I didn’t agree with, since I first got my phone and my Facebook page I don’t remember using “text talk” in anything except on texts and on Facebook. Throughout the video, I never found a fact I didn’t find interesting whether it be how websites are made, either html or xml, how digital text is easier and more flexible then physical text, or how the web can link us. Although I thought connecting the two was going to be difficult I was able to find a couple ways they are connected.