Surprising

I make a conscientious effort to stay informed on current events, and what was surprising to me was the fact that I seemed to be in the minority in that sense. The central theme to Unit 1 was how the internet has changed our culture’s civic literacy, and with passive news almost unavoidable now due to the internet, the idea that we gather news in different ways now is not surprising. Unfortunately I’m not completely aware of how our sample of young adults compares to the news-gathering habits of other generations prior to the existence of the internet.

Something that I found to be interesting is the sense of guilt associated with not following the news. I don’t mean to say that someone who follows the news is in anyway better than someone who doesn’t, but if you felt guilty about not following the news, why don’t you? Now I can understand it in a sense that many people are “guilty” that they don’t work out more, or that they don’t go to church more, etc. but I find it interesting that this still occurs in an era where news is more readily available than ever before. From my limited perspective there seems to be a negative correlation: that as news is more available to everyone, the less interested they are in knowing the news. I’m not saying that correlation equals causation or even that our time is much different than others in this respect, I just find it interesting. This coincides with Carr’s jet-ski analogy, considering that it appears that many internet users don’t appear to have either the time or inclination to keep up with current events.

Word of mouth appears to be a reliable news outlet for many of my classmates, and one reason for this is maybe perhaps because of the vast availability of passive news. If one can stay functionally informed just from their Yahoo.com newsfeed, then the need to actively seek out the news no longer exists. It should be noted that this is pure speculation on my part, however it seems to me that the reliance on passive news is increasing while the reliance on active news may be diminishing.

The Blogs I Will Follow

I will follow fivethirtyeight.com because I occasionally visited that webite during last year's election. Given the small amount of time I spent there I liked what I saw, and they seemed to be pretty nonpartisan. I'll also follow The Daily Dish by Sullivan because I've always liked his moderate and intelligent viewpoints.

The reason

In general, I get my news from a variety of outlets. I do this for two primary reasons. First, if I were to only get information from a single news source, I would be limited to only seeing from said news source’s point of view. Secondly, what type of news I’m interested in also dictates where and how I receive news. For example, I’d go to find news about the status of the health care bill in a different place than where I’d find out who’s on this week’s NFL injury report.
To find local news, I’ll read the Courier-Journal, mostly because there really are no other alternatives. (I refuse to ever watch local TV news).

Something that the internet has undoubtedly provided for is a venue for receiving almost infinite information very quickly. For news, this is especially true. If a major breaking-news event happened, the first place I (and many others I presume) would go would be to the internet to find out more. Oftentimes I’ll find out what the news is on the internet, and then I’ll utilize the internet and other resources such as a newspaper or TV to find analysis of that news. A variety of news sources I feel is important here, because the news can be interpreted in different ways, allowing for it to be affected by bias.

I especially try, when receiving news about current events or politics, to get my news from a variety of outlets. I do watch cable news, but I make a concerted effort to watch some of CNN, FOX and MSNBC because each network is, frankly, not very good. Because watching TV is an entertaining thing to do, it’s an easy place for me to get my news. I’ve watched a good share of MSNBC, FOX, and CNN, and in all honesty The Daily Show on Comedy Central is probably the most journalistically responsible. One of the roles of the media is as a watchdog, and Jon Stewart and The Daily Show essentially act as the watchdog’s watchdog. If the media, especially the cable news media, is being blatantly biased or just simply silly, The Daily Show will expose them. Here is an example of Jon Stewart eviscerating CNN last week. (It’s a relatively long video, but it does a good job to articulate The Daily Show’s role as a watchdog for the media).

If a person were to only watch FOX or MSNBC for their news, they'd be limited to only the conservative or liberal side of it. Using a variety of news sources fixes this problem because it exposes you to a variety of biases, allowing you to form your own opinion.

Draft 2

My graded draft can be found here

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. .

Academic Journal

I found an academic journal about how our changing culture has affected civic discourse. This article will probably coincide with Sullivan and Hedges writings about how civic literacy and cultural change affect eachother.

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B5LU9g2Sqf4nZWRjOWRlNGMtNTE5MC00NzYwLTg5ZTUtZjYzOTA2ODQyZDE5&hl=en

I Need to Come up With a Better Title For the Last Post

I’ve learned something about me writing after doing these blog posts. Regardless of the topic, I simply cannot come up with a good title. Even the title of my blog is about as lame and generic as you could think of. Fortunately for me the writing we have been doing is analytical as opposed to creative. Because in terms of creativity, “Allan Mathis’ Blog” doesn’t really compete with “Words in the Machine” or “A Temporary Record of my Sporadic Thoughts”, or even “Who Poisoned the Grapes?”. (If you find out Christian let me know.)

The most surprising thing about these blog posts, apart from the realization that I am the least original title-giver ever, is how short exactly 250 words is. With this post being an exception, all of my posts have easily exceeded 250 words. I’ve learned that developing and elaborating on ideas simply takes more than 250 words, or that I may need to work on becoming a more concise writer, one or the other.

I don’t believe that my web habits have changed, with the obvious exception that I’ve spent more time blogging for English classes than I have in the past. While my habits may remain the same as they were before, I am more aware of how the internet has affected my life. Before this class I would read a news article online, now I will read a news article online and think about how the internet has affected the newspaper industry, the potential pros and cons of citizen journalism, and the inherent drawbacks of the marketization of the news industry.

For the most part, however, my attitude toward reading and writing on the web hasn’t really changed. I’m more informed about theories of the likes of Carr, Sullivan and Hedges, but this newfound awareness hasn’t affected what sites I visit or how exactly I should interpret them.