When I first downloaded the two articles “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and “America the Illiterate”, I thought ‘I
don’t know what would be the connection between those two articles’. Is Google Making Us Stupid? is about how
as we started getting information from online, the style of people’s reading
and writing has changed, and he debates whether it is a good change or a bad
one. According to him more people started to read writings on the Internet, and
stopped reading paper books. As he said, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea
of words (reading books and find information from them). Now I zip along the
surface like a guy on a Jet Ski (Searching the information online, and he can
get the information he was looking for without having to read a entire book, and
etc).” One of people he describes on his article, Bruce Friedman, he even
admits, “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a
longish article on the web or in print”. This reminds me of myself. When I was
in elementary school reading was my favorite free-time activity. I went to the
school library everyday after school, and read at least more than one book per
day, but now I can hardly sit down and read a book without feeling tired.
I also agree with what Nietzsche said, “[Our] writing
equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts”. People’s reading and
writing habits has changed compare to older generation when we used to only
read paper books, newspapers or etc.
Hedges thinks the level of our future
literacy is going down, because reading online
is making our ability of reading decrease, but I do not necessarily agree. I think
we read to observe information and other people’s thoughts and idea, like how I
read online news articles to know current events, and use blogs to read other
people’s writings. So even thought our generation reads online we can still
expand intelligence. We are just
doing it faster than people have ever been able to before.
I found your view on online reading very interesting. I like how you said "even though our generation reads online we can still expand intelligence". I agree with this idea because the amount of information we can obtain off the internet is incredible. However, how do you feel about those who are illiterate. If they aren't able to read and comprehend how do they obtain information? Or is it even important for them to gain information? According to Hedges, those who are literate are becoming a minority. If the number of those who can read decreases to such a small percentage, we won't even have a need for the access of information on the internet. I think your ideas in your post are very true, I just think it's also important to look at the broader picture that is our nation.
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