Literacy and teh internets

In another post with a wonderful class tie-in, I though I’d mention how I, like many others, used to think that the Internet, and more so text messaging, were destroying literacy. However, my good friend Stephen Fry has quelled my concern and renewed my faith in humanity. First of all, as we’ve read in class, literacy is a function of past literacy and the current resources available for literacy. Literacy does not go away, but it evolves along with technology. The worry that the Kindle and the Internet will destroy books and newsprint is valid, but mainly an economical argument. It is not unlike how before digital piracy of movies and music, the RIAA and MPAA were worried about tape cassettes and the VHS destroying their business. Fry points out that so too did the rise of subscription libraries and the novel bring about worries of change for the worse.

The literature at the time in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, describing the contempt that the learned establishment had for the rise of the novel – and then of course later with the rise of the penny dreadfuls and sensational literature as more and more people came to read it – again there was a great cry of despair at how there would be nothing but illiteracy in the world, or at least a kind of refusal or inability to engage in proper, serious study.

Additionally, the barely-English abbreviations that I despise in text messages are nothing new. “You look at a letter written by a 17th or 18th century letter writer, and you’ll see far more abbreviation.” Paper and ink were expensive then, just as text messages are outrageously overpriced now.

So, no longer do I fear for future generations. Well, I still fear, but it is for reasons other than the demise of literacy brought on by texting and Facebook. Check out Stephen Fry’s other thoughts on the Internet, including MySpace and Facebook snobbery, what Twitter is, and where the web can take you.

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