The Consequences of Technology

865 Words4 Pages
The consequences of Technology Clive Thompson’s “The New Literacy” argues against those that affirm that technology makes students become illiterate; he instead states technology in reality promotes students to write more. Although Gelernter agrees with Thompson in that technology has some benefits that can further expand students knowledge, he disagrees that technology promotes students to write more. Gelernter believes technology negatively affect students’ basic and critical thinking skills. Gelernter essay “Computers Cannot Teach Children Basic Skills” succeeds at being more persuasive in convincing its audience; the author achieves this by incorporating profound examples and facts in his essay to further emphasize the negative effect of technology. Gelernter and Thompson used techniques in their essays to try and persuade their audience to agree with them, yet both authors used different approaches to accomplish this. Thompson’s tried to use statistics and data to support his claims in his essay. His results came from a conducted research project that was done in Stanford University on students writing prose. Unlike Thompson, Gelernter instead opted to use examples and facts to support his claim. Despite the fact that both authors’ essays discuss technology, each author wrote for different audiences. Clive Thompson states in his essay that those that claim that due to technology students are becoming illiterate are in a mistake instead he believes technology is promoting new ways of writing in students that can be compare to those of Greek civilization (Thompsons 587). In his essay he point out that students write more than their previous generation, and that this writing is mostly done outside. “Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom” (Thompson 588). Therefore leading to the
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