New literacy

Many would argue that in the age of text messages and IMs, we have become a generation of illiterates. Stanford professor Andrea Lunsford argues otherwise. After analyzing thousands of student writing samples, she concluded that "we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization." You can read the full article here. So is her statement valid? I think the Greek comparison is a bit of a hyperbole, but she's onto something. There is a revolution in writing. A totally new style of literacy is being born, in which the younger generation is absolutely fluent. It's hard to define this as a positive or negative shift - it's just a change. It's clear that writing in all its forms will be different from now on. I'm one of the people who still reads books. I'm a slow reader, but in the last half-year I've gone through novels like Lolita, For Whom the Bell Tolls, High Fidelity and War of the Worlds. I'm sure we have many riveting blog posts ahead of us, but I for one hope we don't lose touch with literature in the classic sense. Not everyone has to sip wine in their armchairs discussing Dante, but the printed word should not be left in the dust as we move forward.