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On you first two points, I agree. I don't think the effect of the Internet on reading and writing can be exaggerated. Pre-Internet, the only writing I ever did

On you first two points, I agree. I don't think the effect of the Internet on reading and writing can be exaggerated. Pre-Internet, the only writing I ever did was when encouraged by parents (such as to penpals I didn't really want anyway) or for schoolwork. I suspect this would have been true for most. And written English was a more formal mode of the language that barely reflected day to day conversations at all. Now, the amount of reading and writing that almost all of us are doing on a daily basis is staggering. In this comment alone I've "written" more than I'd have written for entertainment in most years of my childhood. Informal, day to day language is now fine in writing, a whole new slang culture has appeared, and everyone is sharing their thoughts more directly in a way we could have never anticipated (for good and bad) - it's excellent and I'm so glad I got to see it happen.

mafribe 10y ago
Yes, I agree, the shift from reading to writing is pronounced, and probably profound. After the Internet went mainstream, for the first time in history, large number of people write every day, people who wouldn't have, in comparable social station, have written in the past. Who wrote in the past? Pupils, students, lawyers and some other professionals. Most, would have stopped writing prose after finishing school or university. Moreover, very few would have written voluntarily, only as part of a job, or as part of education. For the majority of the population, all voluntary, fun, hedonic communication (in the narrow, everyday sense) was spoken. This is now very different. I used to think that writing makes us smarter (because it asks us to think carefully, to look at the writing from many perspectives, to try and produce truth, since writing is preserved and likely seen by others), and so had high hopes for humanity ... ... then came Twitter ... and I realised that it's not writing as such that has these effects, but rather social expectations (as for example embodied in the career structure of scientists) in concert with writing that account for those positive effects.

mafribe 10y ago

Yes, I agree, the shift from reading to writing is pronounced, and probably profound. After the Internet went mainstream, for the first time in history, large number of people write every day, people who wouldn't have, in comparable social station, have written in the past. Who wrote in the past? Pupils, students, lawyers and some other professionals. Most, would have stopped writing prose after finishing school or university. Moreover, very few would have written voluntarily, only as part of a job, or as part of education. For the majority of the population, all voluntary, fun, hedonic communication (in the narrow, everyday sense) was spoken. This is now very different. I used to think that writing makes us smarter (because it asks us to think carefully, to look at the writing from many perspectives, to try and produce truth, since writing is preserved and likely seen by others), and so had high hopes for humanity ... ... then came Twitter ... and I realised that it's not writing as such that has these effects, but rather social expectations (as for example embodied in the career structure of scientists) in concert with writing that account for those positive effects.