In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it’s over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn’t serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.
Varsinaisesti Thompson on lyttäämässä käsitystä siitä, että nettiaika tuhoaisi kirjoittamisen. Avain tähän väärinymmärrykseen on omasta työnkuvasta juontuva havaintoharha, joka vaivaa opettajia ja tekstityöläisiä (meitsi mukaanluettuna):
Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.
Ja totta kai internet-kirjoittelu on ältsisti parempaa kuin tavallinen tylsä raapustelu:
Lunsford’s team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.
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Tämähän selittää hyvin todeksi sen, miksi blogiin tulee tekstiä, mutta graduun ei.
Olen muuten tehnyt molempia yhtä pitkään. Blogissa olisi varmaan tekstiä pariinkin graduun, jos vaan keksisi jonkun kätevän tavan soveltaa sitä.