Ben Faustine

Writt 1122

1/30/11

Mr. Leake

            I chose to write this essay to anyone who will listen. I feel like I present an interesting opinion about how our over use of technology affects not only our literacy levels but also our country as a whole. I think that this essay may be tailored a little more to the older generations who were not immersed in the technological world as much as we are. It gives an insider perspective on the affects that our generation is going through.

Technology is everywhere. One has to take a step back to realize how much it affects everyday life. From the first moments of the day waking up to the deathly buzzing of the alarm on a smart phone. Or to the voice of the beautiful Lady Gaga playing out of the new iHome alarm clock, we are surrounded by technology. On the surface it seems indisputable that technology has a positive affect on literacy levels in America. Everything is right in front of us, the Internet enables us to do what ever we desire. We can read and write with the tap of a keyboard of the click of a mouse. “Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes” (Carr 1). It seems ridiculous to even think that the advancement in technology can have a detrimental affect on the literacy rates of Americans. How wrong we are. Technological developments have changed our society in countless ways. However, the literacy of Americans has been drastically and negatively impacted because the developments; literacy rates have changed, reading is no longer a necessary medium, the American society has to be talked down to, and the ability to focus has noticeably decreased.

The United States of America, the land of opportunity, the perfect example of John Wilthrop’s city on a hill… from the outside. If a closer look is taken it can be seen that America has some troubles of its own. Currently the United States of America ranks forty-fifth in the world literacy standings[1]. Although appalling, the significant discovery is the coloration between technological advancement and literacy rates. A test conducted by the Department of Education compared the differences in literacy rates in America in 1992 and 2003. It was discovered that in 1992 40 percent of Americans who graduated college scored in the proficient level on a literacy test. In 2003 this number dropped to 30 percent. A 10 percent drop in 11 years is inexplicable. The study also showed that almost one million college graduates scored in the below basic literacy category.[2] The epidemic does not solely span to high school dropouts, more and more college graduates are becoming less literate because of the constant connection to technology. One of the test over-seers, Grover J. Whitehurst, contributed the drop in literary to the “rising number of young Americans in recent years had spent their free time watching television and surfing the Internet” and the “substantial declines in reading for pleasure”[3].

Americas have become lazy. A nation whose youth spend almost 8 hours a day watching TV, playing video games, or surfing the web.[4] Its unbelievable, no longer do we read a book for fun, instead we stare aimlessly at our computer screens fixated on useless information. Even on our blogs most people commented on how they were surprised with the time they spent doing nothing online. Nobody reads books anymore. How many of us can truly say that we would rather read a book then go online. “A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book”(Hedges 1). It’s a sad, yet unsurprising fact that will only continue to get worse unless we, as a county, make drastic changes to both or educational system and how we live our lifes. Is it really the child’s fault if he or she grows up in a house where neither of his or her parents read?  You are a product of your environment, if the environment is book-less how is the child supposed to become a reader? It can be argued that the lack of tangible reading is compensated by the superfluous amount of reading that is done online. But realistically reading status updates and stumbleupon does not compensate for that literary knowledge that is gained from reading a book. How many of us can say that is the last year we went out to the book store to find a good book to read. Yes, we read, but it is not for pleasure, it is for school. If we do not change out habits we are going to go out into the real world lacking serious literary skills.

The decline in reading and the eight hours the youth spends watching media has forced media to adapt. Our society is no longer treated as mature, intelligent individuals, but instead we have to be talked down to. “Television programs add text crawls and pop-up adds, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info snippets” (Carr 4). Technology has changed our society, our constant Internet use has destroyed out attention span and we are constantly bombarded with a changing media while surfing the web. Consequently, loud pop-ups, shortened ads and articles must be used to retain the users attention. As a result, media has had to adapt, shorten, and dumb down their articles, adds, and stories to keep the attention of the reader. There is a direct coloration between the uses of technology and the ability to retain attention. From 2003 to 2007 the amount of time youth spent in front of TV, Internet, or computers increased almost 2 hours[5]. During the same time period the number of youth diagnosed with ADHD increased 22 percent.[6] The coloration is clear; the more one becomes immersed in technology the easier it is for that individual to become distracted. Because our society has become easily distracted we have loss the ability to read like we used to and have consequently become less literate.

The decline in literacy has forced the media, adds, public officials, and political candidates to speak down to us. During the Kennedy-Nixon debates they spoke at an average grade level of about 10, in the Bush-Gore debates they spoke at an average grade level of about 7 (Hedges 2). In just 50 years, in direct coloration with the advancement of technology, the literacy level of our country has changes so drastically that presidential candidates now have to speak with the literacy of middle schools so that the people in our country can understand. These debates are no longer intellectual, but have become a way for the candidates to use short catchy phrases to grab the attention of their audience.

What has our society become? Can it really be argued that technology has taken one of the strongest countries in the history of the world and made it less and less economically significant over the past 20 years? It sounds like I am America bashing, but I am not. I love my country and most of the things that we stand for. It is intriguing, could technology really be hurting our country rather then helping? In my mind it has undoubtedly changed the way that we read and absorb information. For the most part we have become easily distracted and easily board. The Internet has really contributed to this phenomenon. The Internet provides a platform for an ever-changing media where ones A.D.D can be satisfied. You can go from, playing a game, to watching Jersey Shore, to wandering aimlessly through the black hole that is youtube. It is this never-ending distraction that has down graded the literacy level of our society.

                        The negative affects do not stop with literacy, one has to take into account what happens when there is a decrease in literacy. “Individuals who have below basic English literacy skills are more likely to be unemployed than individuals in the intermediate and proficient literacy categories”.[7] Below basic literacy causes unemployment that rate are currently higher then they have been in decades. Illiteracy is not just causing unemployment but is costing our nation “tens of billions of dollars per year.”[8]The fact are unbelievable, “two-thirds to three-quarters of adults receiving public assistance exhibit the lowest levels of literacy,

the average health care cost for adults with low literacy skills was four times the amount of the average American. The United States prison population has tripled since 1980 and seventy percent of those inmates are either functionally illiterate or read below the eighth grade level.”[9] The declining literacy levels in this country are costing us. It is causing unemployment, crime, and the need for public assistance. It does not seem like this trend will end soon, and will only get worse. Is it really that much of a surprise that our country is experiencing this economic crisis when so much money is being lost because of illiteracy? Something has to be done; literacy seems to be behind most of the problems in our country. It causes unemployment, economic discrepancies, desperately needed government handouts and is slowly eroding our beautiful country. What is behind the drastic changes in literacy levels? Technology. This spiral does not seem to be stoppable in this world that is exponentially becoming more and more dependent on the use of technology to survive in every day life.

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[1] "Literacy Rates of the World." World by Map: Statistics, Maps and Charts. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://world.bymap.org/LiteracyRates.html>.

[2] DILLON, SAM. "Literacy Falls for Graduates From College, Testing Finds - New York Times." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/16literacy.html?incamp=article_popular&pagewanted=print>

[3] I.B.I.D.

[4] Reinberg, Steven. "U.S. Kids Using Media Almost 8 Hours a Day - BusinessWeek." Businessweek - Business News, Stock Market & Financial Advice. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/635134.html>.

[5] I.B.I.D.

[6] "CDC - ADHD, Data and Statistics - NCBDDD." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html>.

[7] "'See Spot run' befuddles fewer Americans / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com." The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1216/p02s01-legn.html>.

[8] " ProLiteracy “ Improving lives and communities through adult literacy  ."  ProLiteracy  “ Improving lives and communities through adult literacy  . N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://www.proliteracy.org/NetCommunity>.

[9] I.B.I.D

Call me Sir Blogalot

4 weeks and 9 blog post later I feel like a new man, changed for the better and ready to challenge all of our worlds challenges. Well not really, but it does feel good to have written my first ever blog. I have to admit, I was skeptical going into this project. I had never really taken blogging seriously and I thought it was sort of dumb. But after writing my blog and reading others I began to find it interesting. I loved being able to write my opinions and then being able to go to a classmates page and read their opinion of the same piece of text.

The most challenging thing for me was writing in a less formal format. I am used to writing analytical essays with a thesis, evidence and analysis. I feel that this limited my ability as a blogger. Looking at my posts I saw that I kind of got stuck in between the formal format and the informal format and that took away from my writing. The most surprising thing that I encountered while blogging was how much I enjoyed it! Besides a steam of consciousness essay that I had to write in high school, I have not had the opportunity to write in this format before and it was revitalizing.

The one major way that my Internet reading and writing habits have changed is that I have become more aware of what I am doing on the Internet. The Internet log assignment was truly eye opening. Now I really pay attention to the websites I am going to and how many times I click on the facebook tab on my bookmark bar, not because I need to do something, but just out of pure habit. I also want to get more into blogging. I don’t really want to start a blog, because I don’t really have anything interesting to blog about, but a certainly want to start following other blogs. I have really begun to enjoy reading other blogs and reading others true opinions rather then edited and revised articles.

We are not that dumb

Hedges and Carr present the negative literary statistics that are omnipresent in our society. They spend time focusing on the negative, blurting out random and un-cited evidence. Speculation and antidotal evidence is used in both Hedges and Carr’s articles without using literary techniques of analysis. These two articles are just plan annoying and not well written in the opinion of a 13^th grade student. Hedges and Carr don’t spend time in their texts discussing literacy they simply present their one-sided opinion without delving into the multiple perspectives of what literacy actually is and how it can be defined in many different ways.

            Scribner and Thompson provider relief in the seemingly never-ending pessimistic discussion on literacy. Instead of railing on the current society, they prevent interesting and invigorating perspectives on literacy. Scribner tries to define what literacy is and uses three different metaphors to categorize literacy. The first metaphor, literacy vs Adaptation was the most powerful in my opinion. In this metaphor Scibner defined literacy as functional literacy, which was the ability of an individual to do “customary activities” (9). She brings up an interesting point, can a person still be considered literate if she can only speak and read at a middle school level but is still able to complete tasks required of her? Can this person still be considered literate if she can complete necessary but not optional tasks? Scribner argues that the customary tasks are different in every society so is it actually possible to create a universal definition of literacy or must it be approached on an individual level?

Thompson’s article provides a relief to the constant critique of our generation being less literate because of technology. Opposed to any other article I have read that provide zero evidence when stating that we are less literate because of our facebook, email and iChat lingo Thompson provides evidence from Andrea Lunsford 5 year study to back up his conclusions. He states that “that young people today write far more than any generation before them” (1). This non-sensible argument that we are not as literate is preposterous because no other generation has written more then ours is writing now. Yes, this is interesting but what really seals the deal for me is that in her study “she didn't find a single example of texting speak in an academic paper” (2). To me that really hammers the point home. Although this article in very interesting its legitimacy has to be questioned. Where did the texts she used in her study come from? Did she take works from private schools as well as inner city public school? How every skeptical I may be, it was nice to read a positive article for a change.

Literary concerns, wow, there are certainly a lot of those. I think that my biggest concern is the growing discrepancy in our education system. Simply put public schools are not what they used to be and they are getting worse. If we don’t fix this problem as a society I think we will begin to see a large increase in “illiteracy” in our country. 

Now vs. Then

In the text America the Illiterate, Chris Hedges defines literacy as the ability to read above a middle school level. Hedges shows that there are “50 million Americans who read at a fourth or fifth grade level” (1). This point was very troubling to me. I am amazed how our country is able to function even though one third of our country is barely literate. I guess it can be argued that our country really isn’t functioning the way we used to. Could there be a correlation between literacy and the success of our country? It seems like there is. It is a common opinion that the United States of America was a more successful country in the 60s then it was in the 2000s. In a study conducted by the Princeton Review they compared the literacy level of the debates between Kennedy and Nixon and Gore and Bush. In the Kennedy/Nixon debates they spoke at a literacy level of 10^th graders while in the Gore/Bush debates they spoke at a 6^th grade level. This correlation is hard to ignore. The literacy level of the president’s speeches mirrors the literacy level of the audience. In the 60s the literacy level was higher and our country was strong, now the literacy level is that of a middle school student and our country is weaker.

Both Carr and Hedges bring up interesting and possible true points. The connection that I see between both articles is that Americans, whichever way you look at it, had changed for the worse. We are no longer the John Winthrop’s city on a hill. Our creations have lowered our literacy level and made us more ignorant individuals. Outside of our borders we are the “fat lazy American.” Has the Internet really done this to us? Or are there other factors that have drastically contributed to the illiteracy level of Americans?

Are we stupid?

In the article Is Google Making Us Stupid, Niccholas Carr argues that the Internet had changed us but not necessarily made us stupid. Google has and will continue to make us stupid by association but not intrinsically more stupid. Carr explains to the reader how he has recently had trouble focusing on reading a book or getting involved in an article or text. He states that his “concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages” (1).  Carr said that in the past, becoming deeply involved with a text came natural to him, but as the computer age had thrived he is no longer able to stay concentrated and his mind often “drifts.” Carr never seems to answer the question directly but uses implication to lead the reader to the answer.  Throughout the entire article it is evident that Carr believes that the human mind is changing but not necessarily becoming more stupid. Carr’s loss in ability to stay focused is not unique, he states the opinions of his friends and how “the more they use the web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing” (2). The web had changed us. There is no arguing that, data and information are immediately available to us. There is no longer a need to focus for long periods of time because the Internet is constantly changing and we receive information almost instantaneously. There is no need to sit a read for long periods of time and because of this our environment has to constantly change to entertain our mind. Again, this does not make us stupid just different.

The web has made our minds less easily entertained but Google itself, Carr argues, has made us stupid by association. Google has steadily become more intelligent then the human mind, a sort of artificial intelligence that has the ability “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (6). The creation of Google is fascinating, but as Carr argues has made the human mind peril in comparison “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world” (8). The human mind isn’t more stupid, but instead is no longer the most intelligent entity in the world.

There is an evident correlation between our use of the Internet and Carr’s argument of the changing mind. Viewing the Internet logs of the students in our class the constant need for a changing in our environment is evident. Students were constantly changing and returning to websites. Sites like stumbleupon are the epitome of Carr’s argument, the need for short, entertaining, and ever changing substances in ones life.

Harris Vs. Sullivan

In Jospeh Harris’s Rewriting, he describes academic reading and writing as an unoriginal piece of text. Harris shows that academic writing is always “in response to the work of other” (1). Because all academic writing in some form or another is based off of a different piece of work Harris calls writing rewriting. To Harris rewriting is not just simply restating a previous work but it is the job of the writer to “add something to what is being talked about” (2). Writing has to use other works as a launch pad for taking the subject to the next level. Harris believes that to be a good writer one must “draw quickly on terms and ideas from other thinkers” (16). Harris states that reading is one of the precursors to rewriting in that “what intellectuals have to say is bound up inextricably with the books [they] are reading” (2). Harris only talks about reading and writing in the intellectual field. It seems that he it almost saying that there are really no original ideas and the ideas that we come up with we get from reading others’ works and when writing we don’t come up with our own ideas but simply build off someone else’s.

            Comparing Harris’s text to Sullivan’s text would be like comparing apples to oranges. Harris focuses on intellectual writing while Sullivan writes about his free form blogging. I agree with Harris that intellectual writing does, for the most part, build off the ideas of other. Sullivan, however, was not talking about intellectual writing. It could be argued that he was talking about un-intellectual writing. Blogging is about freedom from format and requirements and writing about what you actually feel without the restriction of the intellectual world. I feel that Sullivan and Harris have opposite definitions of writing.

Facebook Facebook and more Facebook

Facebook. What an amazing tool to keep in touch with friends and family across the world. It was also the one site that every single person visited multiple times. It is truly amazing how much time our generation spends on facebook. On a few blogs I read that even though they had no reason to visit facebook or they had just visited facebook they had to go back. I can relate to this feeling. To me it is almost automatic; if I turn on my computer I will go on to facebook. Whether my intentions are to check my email, print something out, or finish a paper facebook somehow is always opened. Even as I am writing this blog post I can see my news feed in the background.

            Another similarity I noticed was how much time is spent on unimportant things. I could be netflix, collegehumor, or stumbleupon but the majority of time spent online really has no significant impact. This was astounding to me. I knew that our generation spent a lot of time unconsciously searching the web but I did not realize how prevalent it actually was. One can argue the importance of surfing the net, but can you really remember the videos you watched on youtube last week, or the pictures you saw on stumbleupon. Imagine how much could get done if we did not waste as much time. I don’t mean to sound accusatory as I am certainly guilty of the aforementioned crimes, but I was amazed by what I saw.

            As I was looking through the blog posts of my classmates I was pleased to see that most people make a daily habit of reading a few news stories online. Whether it is a silly yahoo story or a more serious news source, keeping up to date on current event is important and it was nice to see that some productivity took place online

Web Log

Saturday:

10:17-10:32 Facebook: read newsfeed, stalked a few people

10:32-11:07 Read online news sources, CNN, Yahoo new, and NY times. Read 5 articles.

11:46 ESPN and sfgiants.com, caught up on my hometown sports news.

1:17-3:09 Netflix.com watched 4 episodes of weeds

3:34-3:45 read two more articles on cnn,com

3:45-4:03 Facebook browsing.

5:07-6:00 weeds on netfilx.com

Sunday:

11:06-12:30 weeds on netflix.com

1:13-1:26 Facebook stalking and newsfeed reading

3:43-4:20 Read 3 artilces on cnn.com, 1 on NYtimes.com and 6 on yahoo com

5:15 blackboard.com to search for homework assignments

5:34-6:02 sfgiants .com and espn.com for sports news

6:17: nciku.com for help with Chinese homework

7:13-7:30 facebook newsfeed reading

10:16-10:46 facebook chat with friends back home

11:06-12:30 weeds on netflix

            Keeping a log of the websites I visited was an interesting idea, one that I had never really thought of. There were a few things that really stuck out to me. The first one is how addicted I have become to Showtimes’s show, Weeds. Within a 48 hours period I watched half a season. The second item that I was surprised about was how little I went on facebook. Going into the project I thought that I would have spent more time on facebook. If I were to do this project again I would probably take the log during the week. I feel by doing it on the weekend limited the amount of time I spent by my computer. I slept in and went out, if it were a weekday I would not have done that and therefore would have probably spent more time surfing the web.

Why I blog… Blog

In the article Why I blog, by Andrew Sullivan, Sullivan uses his decade of blogging to compare the instantaneous, spontaneous, and raw honesty of blogging to the slow, trivial and tedious processes of writing a column or article. Through his article he answers the question of why he blogs.

            Blogging and writing an article can be considered almost polar opposites. Sullivan defines blogging as the “spontaneous expression of instant thought” opposed to the “endless delays, revisions… editorial fights, and last minute cuts” that writing an article entails. Sullivan contrasts the two styles to show that blogging allows an individual to express him or herself freely and with out the constraints of an editor. Blogging enable to the writer to write exactly what the mean or think at that point in time. Sullivan blogs because it is “free-form and more accident prone.” Typically being accident-prone is not a reason to partake in an activity but Sullivan feels that being accident-prone makes the writing more real and honest while writing an article involves hours of editing to make the story “prefect”. The search of perfection within articles removes some of the “raw honesty” that is prevalent in blogging. Sullivan also blogs because he cherishes the idea of being able to know exactly how he felt at certain time. Sullivan expresses his ability to recount how he felt not only on 9/11 but “how he responded at 3:47” in the afternoon. This ability to look back and understand and recount an exact moment in time is one of the many reasons that Andrew Sullivan blogs.

There is a first time for everything

Blogging. A literary tool rarely used by yours truly. In contrast to the hundreds of paper submitted to English teachers, I feel alien writing on a public forum for all to read, critique, and comment on.  Creating the blog itself was simple; the challenge really began when I had the blank word document sitting before me with my vacant mind staring at the cursor blinking on and off. After what seemed like endless hours staring at my computer I surfed the web in search of inspiration and discovered blogs with subject matter ranging from J-walking to coffee brewing among thousands of other. I slowly realized that blogging is not about what you write about but is just about writing something.

Blogging and facebook; similarities are prevalent and differences are widespread. Both blogging and posting on facebook involve sharing ones experiences in life. The two are considered forms of social media and create an environment to connect with friends. The differences between the two are pretty obvious. The rightfully dubbed “crackbook” is just that, consisting of over 100 million users, one hooked it is almost impossible to break away. Blogging can and certainly is addictive to some people but no nearly to the extent that facebook is. Blogging tends to be a documentation of an event in a persons life for a certain period of time. Subjects can range from taking the bus to work for a month, or ones trip to an exotic destination. If one goes through their friends on facebook they would most certainly discover people who they met once at a party, or someone who is a friend of a friend. The followers of a blog are truly interested in the subject at hand, and are curious about reading the experiences of the blogger.