Essay First Draft

Since the advent of the information technology age, many people have become concerned with the state of civic literacy in America. Due to the watershed invention of the internet, our collective reading and writing habits are inevitably going to change; and because the internet is still in its infancy, there is significant concern about the ramifications of a cultural shift of this magnitude. Many people subscribe to the belief that the internet will eventually inhibit our cognitive and social abilities, that essentially because information is easily available to everyone, one isn’t required to think critically about anything. As Nicholas Carr points out in his article “Is Google Making us Stupid?”, there was trepidation about Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, as people claimed that the availability of books would weaken people’s minds. This backlash against technology is an obvious parallel of resistance to the internet today. Just as the printing press was a Godsend for an intellectual revolution hundreds of years ago, the internet will make its users more equipped readers and writers. The inherent ease and accessibility of the internet will not restrain people’s minds, it will simply catalyze the spread of information, allowing people to become aware of new ideas which will enhance us intellectually.
The debate about the potential effects of the internet’s assimilation into our culture is perhaps more polarizing than necessary. Chris Hedges articles “America the Illiterate” and “Bad Day for Newsrooms”, along with Carr’s article affirm their belief that America’s overwhelming reliance on the internet has weakened our country’s collective intelligence. Andrew Sullivan’s article “Why I Blog,” and Clive Thompson’s article on “The New Literacy”, on the other hand, have a much more optimistic outlook regarding the internet. The article “Civic Discourse Amid Cultural Transformation” by Calvin Massey agrees with many of the ideas brought up by the less-than-optimistic Hedges and Carr, however he is also an ironically Sullivan-esque supporter of the internet.
Calvin Massey’s article, by in large, explains how we have become part of a “graphic-based culture” as opposed to a “print-based” one, thus his beliefs are almost identical to Hedges in this respect. Massey references how the invention of the telegraph was the beginning of the end to the print-based culture, as it was a much faster and more convenient means of communication across long distances than hand written letters. Massey is not anti-technology, however, as he is quick to acknowledge the benefits that technology has presented throughout history. He, along with Carr, equates present-day technology with Gutenberg’s 15th century printing press. Before the printing press, Massey explains, the only means available for people to learn the Bible was through their priests. After the Bible was printed on a mass-scale, God became infinitely more accessible to the public and priests on an educational level became obsolete. This, however, had ramifications that would have been impossible for Gutenberg to foresee, such as an increase in civic literacy, the Protestant Reformation and even the 18th century enlightenment. Because the internet is so relatively new, one cannot accurately predict all of its future effects on civic literacy. And while we will not live to see all of the effects that the internet has on civic literacy, history shows us that inventions that have increased the flow of information and ideas between people have in general provided more benefits than problems.
In “Civic Discourse Amid Cultural Transformation”, Calvin Massey references New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell. Describing Gladwell as a technologist, Massey says that he offers the idea that technology can indeed replace certain things. Gladwell explained that a process called “collaborative filtering” (208) could replace the need for suggestions by someone in a bookstore based on computer analysis of one’s literary likes and dislikes. Massey explained how he was rather skeptical about the idea that technology could so easily replace human interaction. Gladwell, unlike those who are apprehensive about the internet’s effect on our culture, understands that technology, in many cases, has possibly many unseen benefits. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, Gladwell discusses the relationship between technology in the form of email and personal interaction.

“The Fact that anyone can email us for free, if they have our address, means that people frequently and persistently email us. But that quickly creates immunity, and simply makes us value face-to-face communications – and the communications of those we already know and trust – all the more” (275)

Gladwell’s email example illustrates the idea that technology can enhance one thing while still offering an alternative to it. The internet isn’t necessarily revolutionizing civic literacy, it could instead simply enhance it by offering the public a new place to read and write.
In terms of civic literacy, a leading indicator is the state of journalism. Initially, many people would consider journalism to be in decline because of the floundering newspaper industry. Journalism and newspapers, however, are not totally synonymous. While it is clearly easy to see how badly the newspaper industry is doing, the state of journalism itself is much more difficult to define. As the need for priests was diminished by Gutenberg’s printed Bible, the need for newspapers to find out information is being diminished by the existence of the internet. Gutenberg’s printing press didn’t bring about the elimination of priests or the Catholic Church, it simply changed it instead. This coincides with Andrew Sullivan’s belief that newspapers and the internet can coexist as news sources. For some, such as Chris Hedges, journalism is in decline strictly because newspapers are. Hedges asserts that if newspapers die, journalism will die with them because newspapers have certain characteristics that internet sites lack, such as the possession of significantly more accountability for stories and resources for extensive research and coverage. Andrew Sullivan, on the other hand, claims that we are in “a golden era for journalism.” However, the truth about the state of journalism in this country probably lies somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.
In “Bad Day for Newsrooms,” Chris Hedges never once mentions the idea that the newspapers companies themselves might be responsible for a very small part of their decline. Nothing can really compete with the speed and accessibility of the internet. Watching newspapers compete heads-up with the internet in terms of convenience is heartbreaking because they simply cannot win. It’s almost reminiscent of mom-and-pop stores competing with Wal-Mart. What newspapers must do is offer a product that is different than the internet blogosphere. Hedges mentions how newspapers are shortening their articles to simulate the internet, and what newspaper companies must realize is that people will generally choose the internet over an internet simulation.
In spite of the panic, it is possible that newspapers are just in a downswing. As news becomes less and less newslike there might rise a demand for more traditional, unbiased and responsible journalism. Perhaps the path of journalism is less linear and instead resembles that of a pendulum. Maybe we’re just several years away from a newspaper comeback, where responsibility and credibility will become sought after traits once again. Sullivan equated the coexistence of newspapers and the internet with the coexistence of jazz and classical music. Because the two medium have inherently different advantages, (e.g. the ease and accessibility of the internet vs. the depth of newspapers), Sullivan claims, the internet will simply add to the collective state of journalism just as newspapers do. Using Sullivan’s metaphor, the invention of jazz didn’t bring about the end of classical music, it was simply a different alternative that added to music as a whole. Just as the internet offers different characteristics than newspapers, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The public is becoming better readers and writers because the internet it not necessarily taking away from the print-based culture, it’s adding to it.
According to Chris Hedges’ “America the Illiterate”, our country is strictly divided into two sects, those of the print-based culture and those of the image-based culture. One third of the nation’s population is either illiterate or barely literate, so there is predictably a rather large divide between the enlightened and the unenlightened. Historian Alan Brinkley, according to Massey’s article, stated that colonial America was highly literate relative to Europe. This is a very interesting juxtaposition compared to what Hedges maintains in his article about the country’s current state of literacy. According to both Hedges and Massey, somewhere during the history of American culture we have transformed from a print-based culture to an image-based one. Both writers provide pages of evidence to support this, and personally I completely agree that with their assessment. Simply put, this cultural transformation could not have occurred without the aid of technology, and this is perhaps partly the reason for some of the resistance towards the internet. But the idea that culture couldn’t have changed without technology and the idea that technology changed culture are very similar but not totally the same. According to Massey, the enemy of civic literacy is not necessarily the internet, it’s the diminishing of the print-based culture.
While discussing the history of civic discourse, Calvin Massey asserted that books changed greatly changed the state of communication. He says: “Before the printed word, communication was necessarily social. But books are best read in silence; the conversation is between the absent author and the present reader. Human sociability and reading are incompatible, at least at the same moment in time.” This illustrates one of the inherent limitations of printed books. The internet, however, is not bound to this limitation. Andrew Sullivan, in “Why I Blog”, described how the internet has allowed for writing to become a communicative social endeavor. He claims that roughly one third of his writings are reader-generated, and his article states that many blogs in existence oftentimes write in response to other blogs. This electronic literary “conversation” has clearly benefitted literacy because it has provided for more opportunity for reading and writing that wouldn’t have existed without the internet. Clive Thompson, in his article about “The New Literacy”, states that the internet is a blessing for literacy because of the simple fact that the internet has allowed for many people to essentially “practice” their reading and writing skills. This illustrates how the internet is a nonpartisan in the war on literacy. For the image-based culture, the internet can diminish news stories into headlines, snippits or tweets. For the print-based culture, the internet can provide for extensive analysis, public discourse and almost infinite information. The internet itself is not changing how we read and write; instead, our utilization of the internet is what is changing it.
The ideologies of Sullivan and Thompson seem to directly contradict the beliefs of Carr and Hedges. Who’s right, then? It seems hard to believe that the internet could simultaneously cause the dumbing down and the literary revival of America. The two outcomes, however, do not have to be mutually exclusive. The image-based culture will gravitate towards sites that offer sensationalism and provide no real intellectual growth. The print-based culture, on the other hand, will use the internet as a tool for the gathering information, opinions, and ideas in a fast and convenient way that will benefit civic literacy. Partly because of its sheer quantity and variety of websites, the internet has provided many opportunities for people to read and write that previously did not exist. This opportunity for discourse may not totally change how we read and write, however it will probably enhance it.

Works Cited
1.) Massey, Calvin. "Civic Discourse Amid Cultural Transformation." Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature. 12.1 (2000): 193-215. Print.
2.) Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. First Bay Back Paperback ed. New York, New York: Bay Back Books, 2002. Print.
3.) Sullivan, Andrew. "Why I Blog." Atlantic Nov 2008: 1-4. Web. 27 Sep 2009. .
4.) Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?." Atlantic Jul/Aug 2008: n. pag. Web. 27 Sep 2009. .
5.) Hedges, Chris. "Bad Day for Newsrooms." Truthdig 28 Jul 2008: n. pag. Web. 27 Sep 2009. .
6.) Hedges, Chris. "America the Illiterate." Truthdig 28 Jul 2008: n. pag. Web. 10 Sep 2008. .
7.) Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on the New Literacy." Wired 31 Aug 2009: n. pag. Web. 27 Sep 2009. .