Intarwebs changes our minds

I was reading the most recent edition of Wired Magazine that landed on my doorstep this week.  There’s an interesting piece written by Clive Thompson using research from the Stanford Study of Writing organized by Professor Andrea Lunsford.

The argument is that we write more than we ever have despite as critics bemoaning that the the internet ruins students’ writing skills.  We’re probably vastly different (and more participatory) writers than humans have ever been.

Old-school reference material

That got me thinking. What else does the intarwebs change about us? I’ve noticed that people in my program at school who are also working in jobs where they are online the most are also the people who are most likely to cite internet sources, or cite sources at all.  Does the internet make us better referencers? Are we all becoming librarians of a type?

And what about kids with mobile phones that access the internet? Are they more social than we’ve ever been? Teens have always been highly social animals, but the opportunity for constant connectivity wasn’t there before; at some point you had to go home and try to sneak privileges to the corded phone. No longer. In another Wired story (apparently my source of choice today!), it’s explained that texting in the company of others isn’t rude – “texting those who couldn’t be there lets everyone feel they’re part of a larger social network.” This was according to research by Mimi Ito, a well-recognized researcher in the electronic culture of Japanese teens.

Another point made by Ito, this one to the New York Times, is that this persistent use of social technologies is not (as many adults would see it) a waste of time, but rather training for the future digital literacy that we’ll all need to get through our lives.  Ito’s point reflects much of what Henry Jenkins argues in his book ‘Convergence Culture’.  All of these new toys and games are really a practice grounds for generative tools that will become part of our social and economic fabric – it’s just that in human culture, those things that become important innovations often start as ‘novelties,’ widely seen as objects of fun or play but not ’serious’ value.

So the next time I walk around quoting websites like a librarian quotes books – you’ll know why.  My brains are being changed by the intarwebs!