is the internet destroying literacy?

In today's Guardian there's a two-page rant by Doris Lessing about how nobody in the affluent West reads anymore because of the Internet.

IMO this is somewhat undercut by a piece by Wendy Cope on a previous page, complaining that she and other poets are being cheated of royalties by people posting copies of their poems all over the www. What do you think? My impression is that many ppl on this forum hardly ever stop reading and probably have two or three books on the go at once.

 

I'd suggest perhaps the exact opposite, by entering the world of the internet children have encountered more text than they ever used to do.

 

I agree.

 

i think the internet certainly opens up more possibilities to learn and thus read about all sorts of things, opinions, and topics that otherwise you might not learn about. even through chatting on a forum i have found i've learned things that otherwise i might not have heard about.

as far as reading in particular goes, i for one still read quite a lot (though recently have been quite busy trying to finish gifts off for Christmas; so not as much as normal), and I've been online now for 12 years myself (egads). i don't think i have become illiterate, yet. :tongue:

i think what makes the literacy of a nation decline is text speak: no wat im sayin b? b bk l8r wen i lrn 2 tlk


*edit*

you don't even know how hard it was for me to do that.
i'm one of those "send a text with correct punctuation" sort of people.

 

I agree and disagree. It opens up possibilities and grants access to a massive source, but it's how the source is used that counts. You could put a child into a library for eight hours, but will they head for the "young fiction" section or the art section to look at the pictures of naked ladies?

 

Depends what one means by literacy I suppose. The internet encourages the ability to read and write, but perhaps not the desire to acquire knowledge though.

 

i think txt talk is a valid cultural evolution of the language.. it has shortened the written language and made it more accesible, using phonetics like b bk l8er.
the problem is people associate that type of writing with the fact that it is generally used as informal speach, and rarely holds anything intelectual..
but if i was to re-write a poem in txt talk, or a shakespear play.. it wouldn't lose any of its validity.

what is important is whats being said.. not how its being said

 

Txt talk is pretty much redundant now that mobiles have predictive spelling and hopefully it will soon be nothing more than a historical curiosity.

 

2b r nt 2b... dats da q, lolz

 

I think a lot of people would just be watching the tv if the internet didn't exist, and the net does involve interacting through written language which you could see as a good thing.

But it's not the same as reading a book, which requires a greater attention span and can be a much richer experience of language than firing off posts on message boards and chatting on MSN.

 

i guess but alot of people would be out instead of on the internet so i guess for some it has and some it hasnt.

 

surely just evolution of language

 

It's not just what you say, but how you say it, since words are the medium of thought. To say Shakespeare would be the same in txt speak is like saying it wouldn't make any difference if Monet painted using a shit covered stick...

 

shakespeare surely has nothing to do with literacy

 

I was responding to a point Smartie.uk brought up

 

Shakespeare would never be the same in text talk! Part of what is so great about Shakespeare is the way it is written.

I never use text talk, especially when it has the same amount of letters as it would have normally spelt! Just spell things correctly, surely a time wont comewhen a text message is so important that language needs to be shortened so no valuable time is wasted! If so - phone the person!

I actually agree with Lithium about Shakespeare and Monet on this point :tongue:

 

Using text language is similar to the development of teaching english from the mid seventies to late eighties; to which I was caught up and I'm still trying to correct. Forget about grammer. It's theory was that standard english was somehow wrong and people should begin and create language in their localized tongue, colloquial phonetics. What a friggin' mess that created. Writin as ya talke as jhust mad me a riet mess, speekin liek this as peiple confused niver mind tryin to rite oot ow ya speek, nar wot a mean!

 

hehehe ... have you ever tried reading an Irvine Welsh book?

 

I think the mobile phone is destroying literacy. All these text messages and picture messages. No wonder our kids are starting to sound like a malfunctioning vocoder machine


I think the internet is destroying the good old fashioned face to face. If in an ideal world, we would all be in a room talking face to face. Anyone not on line would be out the room. They would be nominated to make the tea of course.

 

JOhn's got a point there. One of my colleagues actuaslly seems to prefer sitting in his office noodling on Facebook rather than coming to the pub with the rest of the gang.