Pretty much every generation looks at the next and wonders how we've deteriorated to such a sorry state. Books bemoaning today's cultural wasteland are a genre unto themselves, and of course they're far from new. Those writing them today were previously bemoaned, in an ongoing chain of downhill slides. And it was always best when we were young.
In internet terms it's already perhaps ancient history, but the Stanford Study of Writing, that began in 2001, examined the writing habits of over 150 Stanford students throughout their undergraduate studies. The chief researcher of the Study, Andrea Lunsford, noted:
I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilizationAnd digital technologies are a major catalyst of this revolution. Clive Thompson, who quoted Lunsford, notes that this "literacy revolution" isn't only a matter of quantity, but of quality as well:
Lunsford's team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.But technologies develop and change incessantly, and that quote from Lunsford, from 2009, may already be outdated. Chat and discussion threads are no longer as prominent as they were back then. Today photos and videos are a prime means of communicating and there's less need for written text. Perhaps there's even a bit of suspicion toward the word-processed text which may seem less authentic than a screenshot. A repeat of that Stanford study today might bring significantly different results.