Rough Draft

Ally Ferrell

Professor Werry

RWS 100

September 22, 2014

Rough Draft

With the increasing prominence of technology in the past few decades, the internet has become just as much of a writing tool as a pencil and paper are. The real question here though is, is this tool actually improving writing? Many researchers have shown that this generation has better writing skills than ever. One of these researchers is Clive Thompson, who has been fascinated with technology since he was just a kid. Thompson studied poetry and political science at the University of Toronto and has been a long-time writer for the New York Times Magazine. He argues in his essay, "Public Thinking", from his book, Smarter Than You Think, that the internet is absolutely responsible for this general increase in writing ability.  He claims that the internet is responsible for a change in cognitive behavior. He supports this by bringing up statistics, personal experiences, and examples of other people. In this paper, I will analyze Thompson’s main arguments and how he goes about supporting them. In addition to examining his good arguments, I will also examine his weaker points and where he could have improved his support.

Walking around an average college campus, one see’s almost everyone on his or her phone texting, tweeting, or emailing. Clive Thompson insists that all of these small tasks add up to a surprising amount of writing. Thompson’s first supporting claim is that the internet, and technology in general, have caused people to write more than any generation has before. And of course, with practice comes more skill. Briefly, he insists that “the internet has produced a foaming Niagara of writing”(46). Just like each water drop in the Niagara Falls helps to create one of the biggest and most powerful waterfalls in the world, each word that a person writes is a small part of a larger mass. In order to help the reader grasp how much the internet has actually increased our writing, Thompson reports some shocking statistics:

Each day, we compose 154 billion emails, more than 500 million tweets on Twitter, and over 1 million blog post and 1.3 million blog comments on WordPress alone. On Facebook, we write about 16 billion words per day. That’s just in the United States: in China, it’s 100 million updates each day on Sina Wiebo, the country’s most popular microblogging tool, and millions more on social networks in other languages worldwide, including Russia’s VK. Text messages are terse, but globally they’re our most frequent piece of writing: 12 billion per day(47).

Thompson uses this evidence to cause the reader to realize how much we really write. He uses examples that his readers will likely relate to; so rather than saying how many books are written in a year, he estimates how many tweets are written in a day. However, Thompson does not give a source to where he found these numbers, which makes this evidence less credible and makes the argument weaker. He says that he calculated these numbers himself, but him being a poetry major does not make it very convincing that these are accurate statistics. 

A popular counter-argument is that today’s technology has lowered teens’ grammar and spelling due to informal texting and IM language. However, Thompson explains why it actually has the opposite effect. He uses research done by a Stanford University English professor, Andrea Lunsford.Her research supports that using IM acronyms such as “LOL” have made almost no impact on today’s writings(66). Thompson explains how others’ research shows that “one analyzed 1.5 million words from instant messages by teens and found that there, only 3 percent of the words used were IM-style short forms”(66). He suggests that the amount of writing done via instant messaging has a much more powerful impact than the type of writing done. Thompson uses a mixture of reliable resources and relatable subjects to help support his argument. Hearing statistics about texting is much easier to connect to than statistics about writing books.

The theory of multiples is another idea that Thompson brings up. He explains how the internet has created a revolutionary network of ideas. In the past, multiple people would discover the same thing without knowing of the other. Thompson uses historical examples of scientists rediscovering the same thing because they were not in contact(60-61).With the internet, people can share ideas and bounce ideas off of each other. Reading articles or a blog that are interesting to you can help to spark new ideas. When you comment on these articles or posts, you may start a chain of new ideas that spreads throughout the world.

According to Thompson, the internet has improved this generation’s writing skills due to something called the “audience effect”. This effect causes people to think about what they are writing, because they know somebody will be reading it. When writing and creating an argument, one will tend to make it stronger when he or she knows that somebody will be reading it and can easily tear apart a weak argument. We see examples of this everyday. When writing a post on Facebook or posting on a public blog, almost anyone can comment on it and critique it. Thompson says that this causes people to think more carefully about what they’re writing and create a stronger and more planned out argument. Thompson gives an example of of what bloggers frequently tell him. They tell him that they start to write on their blogs, “but pretty soon they think about the fact that someone’s going to read this as soon as it’s posted. And suddenly all the weak points in their argument, their cliches and lazy, autofill thinking, become painfully obvious”(52).  Although, this is an argument that doesn’t need much evidence to be convincing, he doesn't give much concrete evidence, just a vague description of what some unnamed bloggers told him. Thompson also does not bring up any counter arguments, like how the anonymity of the internet could affect how people write towards others..

Another idea that Thompson claims is that the internet helps to clarify thinking. What he means by this is that when one writes, it helps him or her to truly understand their thoughts and possible become up with some new ones. Thompson quotes Cecil Day-Lewis, “We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand”(51). He uses a quote from Day-Lewis because he is a very famous poet that is obviously knowledgable about writing and should be considered very credible in the context of writing. A good example of this would be this essay. There is no way I could think of 5 pages worth of ideas and commentary off the bat, but as I write, the ideas come pouring out. It is much easier to expand on ideas when they are written out and you are forced to put them into words. 

To help bring all of his claims together, Thompson tells a story of a Kenyan girl named Ory Okolloh who started her own blog about Kenyan politics(45-46). Her story gives examples of the audience effect, clarifying thinking, and all of Thompson’s other sub-claims. This helps his  overall argument because it gives real life examples of his claims that can be related to. Okolloh is just a normal girl that greatly improved her writing by using the internet. This story helps to bring all of Thompson’s claims together and make it an overall more convincing argument.

In conclusion, Thompson makes a good argument about how the internet is helpful to improve this generation’s cognitive behavior. However, he fails to acknowledge any counter arguments that might say how the internet is harmful to this generation’s writing skills. He doesn't mention the affect that anonymity or the ease of plagiarism have on today’s writers. Also, Thompson doesn't mention any other factors that may have improved today’s average writing skills. It is very much possible that the education system has improved or that the general enjoyment of writing has increased. Thompson seems to give all of the credit for better cognitive skills, even though it might deserve some blame in decreasing the skill while outside forces are the cause of improvement.