Monday, February 12, 2007
New technology and new literacy
As Olson indicated through examining studies by other scholars, the advent of writing as well as of technology that made writing popular has contributed to changing the ways of thinking and bringing new concepts in our thinking system. I think we are living in the era in which new technology is so popular. The technology is different from one that human beings had developed before. In his presentation, Dr. Harrison said that children living in this era learn to read and write in different ways from when current grown-ups used to learn to read and write. It is evident that new technology has brought a lot of changes in acquiring literacy and also defined literacy anew. Then, is this new technology also going to enable new concepts to be blooming and allow new ways of thinking as the writing did in Greek times as well as in Middle ages? If this technology brings changes, what would it be like? How would it be different from the changes that human beings experienced before?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I appreciate your questions about how the newest technology will affect society. I also wonder if the impact will be as big as those in ancient Greece and the Renaissance. I actually think that new technologies are already having an effect. My boyfriend teaches high school and made a comment about how his kids talk like they text, in a very clipped, short hand, informal kind of way. It seems that some of the lines between formal and informal conversation, your home and school voice as it were, are blurring in light of new technologies such as text messaging, instant messaging, and even blogging.
I am really glad that you brought up how technology affects teens's written language. I became really interested in how teens used oral language on their blogs and web-board. As you indicated, they bring their home language (e.g. dialects that they use only at home)and several cues that they use when they tell a story to their friends. Those expressions make their stories "sound" just as if they were talking to me.
I think it's amazing how an entire slang/language created by people who chat and text and whatnot, like LMAO and LOL and OWN3D. I text a lot but I always make sure to spell words the right way and I don't use numbers (like 2 for "to"). As we've seen, writing takes the body out of the telling, but it seems like the internet makes the body even further away.
Do you think each generation wonders about the nomenclature used by teens?
Post a Comment