9/29/18
With the extreme advancement in technology in the world in recent years, the ability to write is literally at everyone’s finger tips, more than ever before. This leads to skeptical questions asking if this extreme ease leads to better writing, or simply just more of it. Since the internet is often seen as damaging to young peoples’ brains, or “dumbing” us down, it is hard for some people to imagine what benefits could come from millions of people using the internet everyday. Clive Thompson; a popular journalist who has written his own books as well as for the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Wired, argues that this public forum called the Internet in fact leads to an improvement of writing, along with many other benefits for people of all ages. With websites that allow people to write stories, comment on other’s stories, or simply blog about their lives, there has never been a better and easier way to express one’s feelings publicly or have an outlet for creative writing. This concept of public thinking has affected writers in many ways, including an improvement in writing, knowledge, and the way they think and see the world. In this essay, I will discuss how writing clarifies thinking, the audience effect, and how writing has improved in young people due to the internet.
People have written in journals for decades; jotting down their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Some may do this to simply keep record of things happening to them, but according to Thompson, writing these things down helps clarify their thoughts. He assures that professional writers have claimed “writing forces them to distill their vague notions into clear ideas” (51). While something may be unclear in their heads, writing it down helps them unravel it and understand. Not only writers feel this way, but famous poets have also commented on this claim. Thompson includes the Cecil Day-Lewis quote: “We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand,” to further back up this idea (51). The internet provides an online forum not only for people to have an outlet to share thoughts with others, but to also be able to understand their own thoughts as well. This is what is beautiful about modern-day technology, writing to the masses is just as simple as writing for yourself. Due to public thinking, clarifying one’s thoughts has never been so simple and easy.
Clive Thompson’s use of evidence in this section makes his argument very strong. To back up his already strong claim that writing clarifies thinking, he decides to include a quote from a famous poet, Cecil Day-Lewis. This kind of evidence is considered an example, because it is not his personal story he is telling, but it is a personal quote of someone else’s. In this case, it is the quote of a famous poet, which heavily builds his credibility, because who would be better to talk about the relationship between writing and understanding than a world-famous poet? This evidence could also be classified as expert authority, because he is using the words of someone that is an expert in writing and poetry to back up his claims. Thompson’s choice of evidence is what makes this claim so strong, and makes the audience trust his opinions and sources.
Another one of Thompson’s main claims is that writing for an audience naturally makes the writing better. He terms this the “audience effect,” because the simple fact that someone will be reading a piece of one’s writing heavily effects them, causing them to try harder and write better. He uses two different pieces of evidence, because they both strongly back up his claims for two separate age groups. The first was an experiment done by Vanderbilt University professors on small children, ranging from four to five years old. They were shown patterns of colored bugs and were asked to predict which would come next in the sequence; with one group solving it quietly, one group explained to a tape recorder as they were solving it, and one group walking their moms through the steps as they were solving it. Of course, the children who had an audience—their moms—did best of all. The children working with their moms “on average solved more than the kids who’d talked to themselves and about twice as many as the ones who’d worked silently” when presented with the harder puzzles (55). Now this is the audience effect seen in young children, but the same results occurred when testing older students. Brenna Clarke Gray, a professor at Douglas College, had her students create Wikipedia entries to see if this would make them want to write better and more accurately. Whereas her students would normally turn in short essays with no citations, they were now writing more formally and finding many sources to back up their facts. Not only could anyone read these entries, they could also edit or delete their words, causing the students to go back, research more, and work harder to get their information right. Because of these two findings, Thompson argues that the audience effect really does naturally force people to write better and stronger.
Again, Clive Thompson’s choice of evidence is perfect for this claim. A topic like the audience effect can’t be backed up by statistical data, surveys, or definitions. It is a personal experience, that must be explained using real people and the way they react to having an audience instead of just writing or working by yourself. The experiment on the children’s puzzles can be classified as thought experiments or an example. Similarly, the teacher from Douglas College kind of ran an experiment on her students, which can be considered evidence that is an example or personal experience. These types of personal experiments perfectly back up Thompson’s claim that writing or communicating to someone else forces you to think and write more precisely.
Clive Thompson also argues that not only has writing increased across the world, the quality of it has also improved. While many people would easily assume that the writing and intelligence of young people has deteriorated because of the extreme use of the internet and technology in recent generations, Thompson asserts that this is not true. He creates a direct relationship between the quality and quantity of today’s writing. Andrea Lunsford, a Stanford University English professor, provides personal evidence of her own students to aid in Thompson’s claim. She uses facts that “today’s freshman-comp essays are over six times longer than they were back then, and also generally more complex” (66). Along with length and complexity, she adds that today’s students tend to stray away from old topics like flowers and personal narratives, and instead write “essays that present an argument, often with evidence to back them up” (66). In other words, today’s students care and write about more serious, controversial topics, rather than trivial or personal ones like students in the past. Another thing she adds is that contrary to what most adults would think, students actually don’t even use “IM-style short forms” that much in formal essays. Surprisingly, she also adds that “kids who message a lot appear to have slightly better spelling and literacy abilities than those who don’t” (66). With the use of technology, specifically texting and messaging; writing, grammar, and language have improved significantly.
One of Thompson’s most obvious rebuttals is when he opposes the claim that more writing doesn’t mean better writing. According to Thompson, it does mean that. He does argue that all this new writing really is good, and is improving with the increase in technology. In my opinion, he doesn’t actually debate it that well. One of Thompson’s weaknesses is his weak counter argument to the belief that more writing doesn’t necessarily mean better writing. He literally responds to the question of “Is any of this writing good?” With “Well, that depends on your standards” (48). Which is a moderate thing to say, because his audience could have many opinions on what is “good,” but that doesn’t make him seem confident on his stance. One of his main claims is that all this writing and millions of words, tweets, and text messages a day has led to an improvement of writing, so why would he so bleakly counter it?
While he has some weaknesses, Thompson also has many strengths and strong points in this piece. His best and most noticeable strength is his ability to mix in evidence with his claims. He uses a variety of sources including statistics, quotes, and personal experiences. His claims are powerful and persuasive because of the evidence he chooses. In the beginning, Thompson starts with a story about a Kenyan blogger and her political motive behind her desire to write. She is not anyone famous or well-known, but her story speaks to the audience, and was a great selection by Thompson. After this story, he transitions into the plethora of information and words that are found on the Internet. The exact quotes and data he uses was perfect to back up this claim that there is a multitude of writing on the Internet, and no other kind of evidence would have this same effect on the audience. As I said earlier, his claim that writing clarifies thinking is backed up by the use of words of famous poets and writers. Since he used these quotes, he was able to establish credibility with the audience, because they can learn about writing’s effects from actual famous writers and poets. Thompson’s main strength is the evidence he chose to use for each exact claim, because each certain kind adds the right effect he intended to have on the audience.
Works Cited
“Public Thinking.” Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better, by Clive Thompson, The Penguin Press, 2014.
Thompson, Clive. Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. The Penguin Press, 2014.
Deegan Roecker 