From Pencils to Pixels

 According to Dennis Baron's article, "Pencils to Pixels," the gateway to literacy is the computer. In a sense I agree with this. The landscape of literacy is rapidly changing, and computers already are a huge part of literacy. Soon, they'll take up an even larger part, and may totally dominate the field. Writing is a technology in its own right because it is a way for us to organize data and information. The pencil is a form of technology, because it is a tool we as people use to produce. Plato argued that writing was bad for humans, because it could inhibit one's memory due to that person just being able to write something down to pull it back out later when needed. A pro of the written word is that it is a good way of keeping records on things, and it can "travel through time." However, written word inhibits physical interaction between people, and it can also be faked. Henry David Thoreau connected to the pencil because his family owned a pencil producing factory. He also spent many years of his life working on improving the pencil technology. The telephone, much like other communications technologies before it, was looked at as impractical at first. However, as its use began to become more widespread, people began to like it. Phones changed the way people talked, along with how often they could talk to each other. With these new digital technologies, it is much easier for a person to commit fraud. That being said, they have also improved our abilities to detect fraud. Nevertheless, these days people are much more skeptical of others and less trustworthy. In his conclusion, Baron is trying to get the point across that just because you are skeptical about something, doesn't mea you should swear it off;if that happened, we may have never seen improvements such as the telephone or the computer. Baron's definition of literacy is very much the ability to adapt. To be literate today, you must be able to transcend from one mean of communication to another.

21st Century Writing

Three challenges of writing in the 21st century that Yancey also describes as opportunities are developing new models of writing, designing a new curriculum supporting said models, and creating models for teaching that curriculum. Yancey explains that writing has faced many challenges in the past, but it has prolonged "in spite of" societies that devalued writing, prohibitions against colored or female writers, and objections to young writers. Yancey's main argument is that we as people need to write more freely and write more than we do now, as well as come up with ways to teach others to do the same. Yancey says that writing doesn't receive the type of cultural respect that reading does because of societies inability or lack of "want to" to change things; reading can control what people think, while writing allows people to break free and think creatively, outside of the box. Reading makes a person feel warm and intimate, while writing creates a feeling of hard work. I can remember recently I was reading a book about a favorite musician of mine, I would get lost in the book and feel like I was actually in his life. Writing, however, doesn't provide that same feeling of affinity, as it feels more like work. Many people, as well as myself, associate writing with work or test taking, as well as other aspects of academia. Process writing is the process in which an author or a student writes their paper. Factors of process writing are invention, drafting, review, reflection, revising and rewriting and publishing. Self-sponsored writing is a type of writing that belongs to the author, not an institution, and is free and composed for the use of anyone. The 21st century can be considered the Age of Composition because more people than ever are writing their own stuff, if only for the sake of participation. Everyone that writes is in some way, shape, or form is a composer and is contributing to the world's pool of compositions. The point Yancey is trying to make in this article is that literacy isn't just starting to change, but it already has changed, and is still changing everyday. Literacy is not just one thing, but it covers all types of writing. Literacy is defined by Yancey is the ability to read and write, but being able to write and contribute just as well, if not better, than you can read and take in.

A Brave, New World

In Clive Thompson's "A Brave New World of Digital Intimacy," he claims that our lives are becoming more and more public due to social media, and therefore we are making more connections and broadcasting our lives further. In an interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, Zuckerburg tells Thompson that he introduced the News Feed so users wouldn't have to spend their whole day navigating profiles to see what their friends were up to; it would just appear in front of them. This just goes to show how short are attention spans are rapidly becoming, and that we don't want to take on more than just small bits of information at a time. The article defines ambient awareness as incessant contact with people; with Facebook, you can stay in almost constant, although probably not very detailed, contact with people you are connected with. The paradox of this type of awareness is that we "get to know" people without actually getting to know them in the traditional sense. Although we may be friends with them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter, we've never actually seen or spoke to them in real life. This can be both good and bad; it can help you connect with people you may have otherwise never known of, but then again it can restrict or take away from the relationships you have with people you meet on a day to day basis. An ambient update is a tiny, otherwise irrelevant update, such as "making a sandwich," or "I'm not feeling very well." When Thompson talks about social media being skimmable, he means it in a sense that we may read some of them, and we may skip some of them; we just skim over them as a whole, never really taking any of them into deep thought. This relates to the conversations we've had in class about literacy being able to read something as well as take it in and analyze it. Our "weak ties," as Thompson calls them, are people we're not really acquainted with, just connected via social media. Like I said above, this can help and hurt us; we've made these connections with people we otherwise never would have had contact with, which can be good, but these weak ties can take away from our strong ties, or our actual real life acquaintances. As Thompson says in his article, 20-something's feel pressured to stay on Facebook not so they can keep others updated and see what others are doing, but so they can monitor their online identity. This article defines literacy in the 21st century as being able to read in a traditional sense (a book) and in a modern sense (social media), but also being able to take in and interpret as well as analyze what you have read, not just skimming.

The Cognitive Surplus

In Shirky's article, he explains how the cognitive surplus is the "free time" we as a society have. What we do with that free time, however, is our choice. Shirky argues that when we are first presented this free time, that we are not very productive with it. However, after this period of not being productive, we seem to regain focus and adjust what we are doing with this surplus of time. Literacy in this article is defined as being able to actively participate instead of being passive and sitting back and watching. This definition differs from the other two articles we have read; Wolf and Carr mainly focus on being able to interpret the information in front of you, while Shirky emphasizes actually being part of producing or sharing the information. This article is significant because it calls for society to quit wasting its time doing non-productive things and start to once again invent and produce information.