Extended Essay, Again

The Information Age’s Effect on Our Literacy

Growing up in the information age I had never really questioned whether or not the Internet and other immediate information sources have affected the way that I read and write. Now I have. Obviously the information age has greatly affected the way we are a society read, write, and communicate. This is due to three main characteristics of the information age: immediacy, availability, and simplicity. These three factors have changed our culture in many ways. For example, we are a much more image-based society, which leads us to skim texts rather than “read for a deeper meaning”. These factors have also caused us to be apathetic towards information, which in turns leads us to be superficial in our communication activities. Although these changes are apparent, the question I pose is whether or not we should fret about them. On one hand we have become a society obsessed with flashy images and concise texts. This funnels us all to the same superficial believes that our minds are barraged with. On the other hand we have become a society more knowledgeable in a wide variety of subjects and are very aware of our audiences.

In order to discuss these ideas there must be a clear definition of literacy established. The dictionary definition of literacy is the ability to read and write. This is a very limited definition. According to Hedges literacy is the ability “to separate illusion from truth”. This opens the idea that you much be able to not only read a text, but also be able to decipher what is fact and what is fiction. From Thompson’s viewpoint we are becoming more literate because today we not only “think of writing as good or bad”, rather we think of it as “knowing who you’re writing for and why you’re writing”. This idea extends literacy to include the audience’s ability to understand what we are trying to communicate. The definition of literacy that I believe to be the most encompassing is this: literacy is the ability to decipher the meaning of texts, write in an analytical way, and communicate to a particular audience. This definition not only includes the relatively easy process of reading and writing, but also the ability to understand and decipher the ideas conveyed in a text. The communication factor of this definition allows for literacy to also include the ability to not just convey ideas, but also convey them in a way that your particular audience can decipher.

Having established a definition for literacy allows for my expansion upon the reasons behind the change in literacy. In Melanie Wallendorf’s article, “Literally Literacy” she states “literacy is typically regarded as an individual skill that tends to remain stable in adulthood.” I believe this to be untrue. Literacy, as she states, is an “interaction between culture and the mind”. This interaction causes each individual’s literacy to change throughout his or her lifetime due to the cultural experiences. This is evident in our culture. Due to technological advances such as the Internet and television our culture has become very impatient. We expect our information to be presented here and now. This forced news and media companies to provide our information in an immediate fashion. Which lead to the immediacy of information we have today. Availability has also been enhanced by the emergence of technology. Now rather than waiting for the 6 o’clock news we can surfing the web for the news stories we want. These two faucets of information have pushed our information to be very simplistic. Because we want our information to be immediately available newspapers and other sources of news are forced to “dumb it down”. They must appeal to the masses in order to stay in business. So rather than doing in depth stories on important news they produce stories about car wrecks and drug deals. These flashy stories draw people to watch the news. But is this really news? I don’t believe so. News should be facts about relevant stories in the world, such as wars, international affairs, and other such ideas. Stories that are more in depth force us to open our minds to new ideas. This new ideas allow us to become “literate”. Since these stories are rarely produced we are exposed to the superficial “news” that gets good ratings and entertains the masses.

These ideas of the immediacy, availability, and simplicity of our news media has greatly affected our literacy. For instance, when newspapers were the only form of news available people read the whole paper. Taking in all the ideas presented and deciphering the news of the day. Now that newspapers are on the wane and we primarily use television and the Internet to gather information we tend to be “water skiers” on the “sea of words”. In other words we never decipher texts for a deeper mean. We don’t “scuba dive” into our readings. The type of reading we do today leads us to take ideas at face value. Delving deeply into ideas is somewhat of an alien idea in our mainstream culture. The lack of this “deeper reading” has forced our society into an image-based age. Our information is acquired through flashy images and catchy tag lines. While flashy images and catchy tag lines are great ways to catch an audience’s attention, they should not be the meat of the information we are presented as they have become. Because these things have become our main source of information, our society has learned to loathe the idea of reading for a “deeper meaning”. We have become content to accept the flashy images presented and fear the idea of having to shift through ideas for the true meaning. This fear has led us to be superficial in our readings and writings. And this superficiality has spread into our everyday life. When we read texts for face value, we read people at face value. So the only way to make a good impression is to present yourself in a manner that “the other America” can understand and relate to. This is best exemplified in politics. As Hedges stated in “America the Illiterate”, “American political campaigns…eschew real ideas and policy for cheap slogans and reassuring personal narratives.” Also in that article Hedges shows the diminishing literacy through the reading level of the political debates. “During the 2000 debates, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6).” In comparison to the Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas debates where Lincoln spoke at an 11.2 level and Douglas at a 12.0 level. This difference accentuates the trend toward superficiality in our society. The fact that our political system is forced to “dumb it down” draws attention to the fact that our society has become very superficial in its communication.

The change is our society is apparent. There has been a shift toward image-based information that has caused us to become superficial in some regards. The question is: Should we try to change? On the one hand this trend has been “dumbing us down” for years. By becoming less “literate” we have become blind to media tricks. We take headlines for fact. We no longer question what we read or see on television. We are puppets to anything and everything that the media tells us. When we accept everything that our media presents as fact we lose the ability to think for ourselves. We rarely can synthesize ideas to form our own conclusions. We are generally presented two sides and must pick between the two. This is not how the world is. The world is not only black and white; it is black and white and every shade in between. By giving up our right to think for ourselves through our decline in literacy we are giving up our basic human right. On the other hand the changes have not all been so bleak. We have become able to read more simply because there is so much more availability. We are exposed to millions upon millions of ideas, if we choose to be. We are more aware of our audiences and our purposes. But are these positive changes enough to sacrifice the ideas that we can produce from within our own minds if we would only read more deeply? I think not.

We, as a society, have changed due mainly to technological advances. The Internet and television have given us immediate availability that was only in our imaginations years ago. These advances have given us opportunities to expose ourselves to many ideas, but have also given us the opportunity to access flashy images and personable catch phrases. These flashy texts have directed us to be “jet skiers” rather than “scuba divers”. In my opinion this is an almost tragic trend. We as people in society need to push back against the superficiality that has presented itself due to our choices of information sources. We need to read whole texts, decipher those texts, and come out with our own ideas on the text. By doing this we allow ourselves to stimulate our minds and form our own unique views of the world. We can once again begin to more literate. We will be able to decipher texts more easily, write analytically, and communicate to any audience that we choose.

To sum it all up, the information age has changed our literacy. It has made it more available, but also more simplistic. It has allowed us to skim rather than read for a deeper meaning. It has caused a type of superficiality that must be pushed against. For if we allow this trend to continue we will be at the mercy of the media industry to tell us how to think. But we can very easily push back. By taking the time to read whole articles, watch full newscasts, and analyze all texts we can reverse this trend and in the end become a much more free thinking, educated, and literate society. A freethinking educated and literate society will, in the end, be the most successful society.

Extended Essay

My extended essay can be found here.

Let me know if it has any coherence at all. I have trouble keeping my thoughts organized.

Literacy Article

This article is about literacy in general. It has some definitions of literacy and some discussion of literacy and comsumption.




http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0Bx_sIy8j-_egYzdjNWVlNjQtMDE4ZS00ODlhLTljZTEtNTVkNmY4NWQzMzZm&hl=en

The End

Blogging, for me, presented its difficulties in the same form as all other writing forms do. That is organization. I can never take my thoughts and put them in a coherent sequence to convey my ideas well. So the blog to me wasn't much different than any other form of writing. The most exciting part was the expression involved. The wide breadth of the blog allows for the writer to not only convey facts, but to convey facts in a way that is creative and interesting. So rather than being forced to conform to one setup, I was able to vary my style and use literary devices that are often hard to use in a strictly academic paper.

For the most part my internet habits have not changed. I am simply more aware of them. I still visit Facebook regularly, I still check certain blogs, and all that good jazz. But now rather than mindlessly doing so, I consider the effects that this may have on my mind, in terms of reading, writing, and communicating in general. I almost feel like I am obliged to visit more educational websites to balance out the pointless surfing I partake in. This experience has also encouraged me to do less "surfing" and more "reading for a deeper meaning". I find myself reading whole articles rather than checking headlines. I tend to view a whole video, rather than the highlights. I never did this before. I was very much a "jet skier" on the "waters" of the web. So I'm happy to say that has changed.

I feel like this was a very eye opening experience in terms of my view of a blog, and in terms of my view of the internet in general.

The Wane of Journalist and the Rise of the Socialite

First I'd just like to say that Hedge is quite the negative Nancy. He has the most pessimistic view on the modern age I could imagine. But anywho.

Although I do find Hedge to be a wee bit off the deep end in terms of the negativity, I do think that he raises some interesting points. They are pretty much the same kind of points he made in "America the Illiterate". The fact that we as a society are much too easily swayed by the accessibility of images and short blurbs. The only real difference this time is that he focuses more on how it effects the journalists and newspapers. And he is right. Newspapers suffer from the internet. People don't have time to sit and read through a newspaper. So instead we skim the front page of a website, find the most interesting stories, and skim them. By doing this we tend to focus on the exciting but shallow news stories. Not only do we only "read" certain articles but we also only go to web pages that confirm our beliefs. The human race loves confirmation of their beliefs. When our beliefs are challenged we get confused, or even scared. It is much easier for us to reinforce our beliefs, so we don't shock ourselves too much.

Even though I do agree with these ideas and believe that they need to be discussed, I also see the validity in Thompson's article. The idea of a "new literacy" is very innovative. Most people look at our shift in literacy habits as negative. Lunfords study on our writing and reading habits put a new spin on this shift. Rather than pointing out the flaws, she points out that we know "who we are writing for" and "why we are writing" which leads to very "good" writing. Often people judge writing on its academic merit, but she recognizes that writing should be judge not solely on how well its written, but also on what context it was written.

That's all for now folks.

Frightening Revelations on the Illiteracy of America

Hedge's idea of literacy is the ability to "function in a print based" world combined with the ability to "cope with complexity" and "separate illusion from truth." This is a fair way to describe literacy in my opinion. Although this may be true, this definition of literacy raises, and rightly so, a red flag among Americans. Because as Hedge said, the majority of Americans "exist in a non-reality-based belief system." These people do not possess the "intellectual tools" required to be literate. It is a sad state of affairs when there are "42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read." This in essence sums up Hedge's critique of American culture. There should not be this many illiterate people, period. Especially not people who have graduated high school. Clearly our school systems are failing at their most basic duty. And since there is such a high illiteracy rate in our nation we are failing in other facets of life, such as political participation, intellectual advancement, ect.

To me the whole idea that this article had to be written is troubling. When our nation is having such a problem with literacy that there is an article written to wave the red flag, then something is horribly wrong. The whole basis of the society is communicate. Literacy to communication is like water to living organisms, essential. So with literacy on the wane its no suprise that we have become a image-based culture. Even though this image-based culture is more easily accessible, it neglects our intellect. Our minds are no longer stimulated by political debate. Rather our minds are stimulated by "cheap slogans" and "reassuring personal narratives." Although I agree that this trend is troubling, I do not see the "awful reality" that Hedge does. I believe that if intellectuals begin to push back, demanding a more literate culture with more stimulating information sources, the trend can be reversed.

The correlation that I fould between Hedge's article and Carr's was the topic itself. The idea that this instant age of flashy information rather than meaningful information is simliar to Carr's speculation on our shallow reading habits. That being said I believe that Hedge sees the "awful reality" as inevitable. On the other hand Carr seems to believe that there is a chance for us to revert back to reading for deeper meaning and being more literate.

The Idiocy of the Internet Age

I think that Carr's metahpor, "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.", sums up the idea of his article. I see his answer to the title as a very ambiguous one. In one sense he feels as if the internet is taking away from our ability to read deeply and forcing us to skim across the surface of multiple sources of information. By doing the the internet doesn't necessarily makes us stupid, but it does in fact limit our ability to interpret the deeper meaning of some readings. Even so he doesn't believe that the way we read has changed so much as the way we "think" has changed. We now take all of our readings at face value. We don't delve into the deeper meanings. We simply take the facts (or fiction) as the are without stopping to say (or think), "Wait, what does this really mean?" Through this change in our thought process we may limit our abilities to see deeper meanings, which in turn limit our abilities to think newer and better thoughts. Now not only do we judge a book by its cover, we judge it by its length. We don't necessarily care how it looks, rather how long it looks. If the book or whatever it is we may be reading seems too long we blow it off, by either skmming it or not reading it at all. By doing this we miss many important ideas and points of view.


In relation to our internet activities I think this trend to only skim is quite apparent. Most people visited many websites but only spent a few minutes on each. At most we may have spent fifteen minutes reading an article. But even we do that, we also have many other windows open and surf around, never giving our full attention to any one of the websites or articles that are pulled up. Therefore I believe that this "change" in our thought process due to the internet is a valid concern. I myself often have trouble focusing on one piece of literature for a long period of time. Much like Carr said I can only read a few pages before my mind begins to wander.

With that being said, I think it is our duty as future intellectuals to fight this change and to think more deeply about what we read. To look past the initial meaning and search for the deeper meaning, the one that must be worked for. If we don't, we as society will eventually, in my opinion, forget what it is to think deeply, and lose all intellectuality that is left in us.

Blogging as Writing

In Harris's, Coming to Terms, he describes the relationship between the reader and writer and what duties each has to the other. He says that "coming to terms" is the most important step to being a successful academic reader and writer. As a reader he feels that a you have a responsibility to respect and appreciate the writer's work. Contradiction and discussion only viable when the writing being responded to is recognized as respectable. For example the "generosity" in Gilligan's passage on Freud, shows respect for the ideas of Freud but also expresses that she feels his passage is "deeply flawed". So by recognizing the validity of Freud's statements from his perspective, she strengthens her view that from a woman's standpoint she has a better idea of what the development of relationships is like for a woman. This also applies to the writers standpoint. Obviously by transferring thoughts to paper we are taking this method of reading and comprehension and sharing it with other people.

In Sullivan's, "Why I Blog", he states, "You end up writing about yourself." This is exactly what Harris says that our writing must be but he expands upon that idea. He explains that not only does it have to be about you, but it also must express your views in the topic being discussed in the paper that you are writing in response to. Harris also uses the metaphor of the "forwarding" of ideas. Rather than "responding" directly to a paper, we tend to (or need to at least) forward our thoughts about the paper. And that is all that we should state. An entire contradiction of an idea in a paper with no recognition of validity only wrecks the validity of your ideas. We can't argue that our ideas are "right". All we can do is put them up for discussion.

A Reflection Upon the Patterns of Web Surfing

After reading through my classmates blogs, I have concluded that the internet activity of a person can really say a lot about who that person is, or at least what their interests are. Each person has sites that are unique to their interests and/or hobbies. Some people surf the web for news, sports, music, weather, and a multitude of other subjects. For instance on Chris Fargen's blog he posted a few sites that were strictly for comedy purposes. This says to me, Chris is a funny guy, or he at least has somewhat of an interest in comedy. This little tidbit of information gives me an insight to who Chris may be. I feel like that is part of the beauty in a blog. The ability to get to know a person through their blog is what really sets it apart from other forms of writing. Other blogs had more websites that were news related and show an interest in current events, such as politics or sports. Another example of getting to know people through their blogs were some of the local websites noted on the blogs. Local websites such as louisvillehotbytes.com, are less likely to be known by a person from somewhere other than Louisville. Therefore I assume (making an ass out of you and me, I know), that the people who had visited local websites are from Louisville. Just another little insight from the small amount of internet activity posted. For my blog I mentioned a skate website and a music blog which would let people know that I like to skateboard and listen to music. So I guess one of the main points that I noticed through this exercise was how our internet activities really demonstrate our unique interests.

Although our internet activity did show some unique interests, there were also some websites that were or were almost on every single persons blog. Websites such as Facebook, Ulink, MySpace, and other email sites show that although each individual has their own interests, we also have certain sites that tie us together in a way. Facebook is the best example of this. Since we all do use Facebook we have the ability to network with each other, hence tying us together.

To conclude I have found that our web surfing creates a window into the individual, but it also brings us together on websites like MySpace and Facebook. By creating the window into the person, the web allows the connection that can be made on those social networking sites much easier to obtain.

Thank you and goodnight.

My Escapades of the Web

This is my internet activity from Saturday at 10:00 AM until Monday at 10:00 AM.


Activities on the Internet
Facebook 10:00 AM Sat.
Social Networking

Checked my friend requests.
Chatted with friends from High School. Checked updates and upcoming events.

Wiskate.com 10:08 AM Sat.
Skate Blog

Looked at new posts on the site.
Watched the new skate videos and looked
at pictures.

Ulink 10:15 AM Sat.
UofL's Student Site

Checked my email.
Looked on Blackboard for Articles.

Facebook 5:45 PM Sat.
Social Networking

Checked for updates. No updates.

Pitchfork 5:45 PM Sat.
Music Blog

Listened to some of the "Forkcast".
Checked out New Albums.
Looked at Top 500 Tracks of the 2000's.

Facebook 11:45 AM Sun.
Social Networking

Talked to friends.
Surfed through friends pages.
Looked at tagged photos and friends photos.

Google 12:15 PM Sun.
Search Engine

Searched for maps of Europe and Asia for
World History map test. Searched for bands playing in Louisville.

Ulink 1:00 PM Sun.
UofL's Student Site

Checked email and checked for homework.
Emailed adviser and parents.

Fackebook 8:00 PM Sun.
Social Networking

Chatted with friends about the night.
Confirmed attendance to an event.
Messaged my brother to see how he is.

Thats about it. I don't use the internet a whole lot except for Facebook and school related things. I occasionally check Wiskate or Pitchfork but not religiously.