Writing and Reading for a New Generation Essay -- Internet Cyberspace

â€Å"Writing and Reading for a New Generation† In the past decade, the Internet has taken over. Everyone from young children to senior citizens can communicate, send e-mail, or look up any bit of information in seconds. Because of the overwhelming shift to Internet technology and communication, many aspects of writing have been forever changed. Writers often write differently for the Internet than they do for a physical publication. Readers often read differently on the Internet than physically written text. Within the forms of Internet writing exists one unlike the others and that is personal publishing web sites, such as blogger, live journal, diary land—the list goes on. By allowing any individual to publish anything onto the web, the traditional ideas of writing and reading are automatically forfeited to a new generation of writers. The first thing to understand about personal publishing sites is their uses. What the site will be used for can also dictate which site a person will utilize. For instance, something like diary land (diaryland.com) is typically used strictly as an online journal. People record their thoughts, what they’ve been doing, and what events are coming up in their lives. Like a personal web site, users will personalize the layout of the â€Å"diary† including pictures, borders, etc. Other sites, like blogger (blogger.com), can be used for personal means or professional ones. In the case of my English 328 class, blogs can even be used as a place to respond to writing prompts for homework. In looking at these sites, I noticed that blogger more than the others also had blogs specific to certain interests. For instance, one blog was dedicated solely to lovers of palm pilots. The wa... ...sible to imagine a world in which books were an outdated, archaic technology but as we push further into the future and the future of writing, the possibility looms as a larger and larger force to be reckoned with. Works Cited Bradbury, Grace. â€Å"Diary of a Call Girl.† The Times(London). 10 Mar. 2004, n.68019. T2, p.4. Tribble, Evelyn B. and Anne Trubek, eds. Writing Material: Readings for Plato to the Digital Age. New York: Longman, 2003. Landow, George. â€Å"Twenty Minutes into the Future, or How Are We Moving Beyond the Book?† Tribble & Trubek 214-226. Sosnoski, James. â€Å"Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines.† Tribble & Trubek 400-417. Wagner, Erica. â€Å"A High Price to Pay for Sex Without Love.† The Times (London). 10 Mar. 2004, n. 68019. T2, p.5.