The Pros and Cons of Digital Writing

 


The Pros and Cons of Digital Writing

            Writing is a form of expression that has started in as early as 3400 B.C. with the Mesopotamian cultures in Sumer near the Persian Gulf.  People in other cultures and societies in China, Egypt, and Mesoamerica, including Mexico, Costa Rica, and other Latin American countries, began to revolutionize their expressions with writing in forms of books, glyphs, symbols on stones or rocks, wooden tablets, cuneiform script, pictographs, reed stylus, tokens, logography, the alphabets (Wright), and digital forms.   Despite the forms and styles of writing, people have used writing to express themselves across time and space for many intentions, ranging from trading to everyday conversation with family members.  With the advancements of technology, writing has revolutionized to meet people’s needs, wants, interests, adaptations, progress, innovation, power, ideas, and evolution. Nowadays, people can use writing digitally to support their everyday purposes for different reasons. Regardless of people’s intentions, digital writing has presented itself with both pros and cons.

The History of Digital Writing

When people think of digital writing, they refer to writing online with software applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Docs, and among many others. However, digital writing had started when the industrial revolution started in around 1750. During the industrial revolution, people, especially merchants, used different ways to sell or trade their goods and services.  For example, instead of writing down long lists of procedures for workers to perform certain tasks, people invented machines and tools embedded with digital codes to allow machines to do the work faster than humans.

 

How did the industrial revolution relate to digital writing?

For example, the American society began in 1776 when colonists declared independence from Great Britain.  During this time, the colonists were divided into different social classes, and those who could afford had opportunities to learn how to write using quill pen to learn how to write. Writing during this time evolved with handwriting on pieces of papers and moved to penmanship. Eventually, as the young nation started to develop more, women, mothers, and enslaved people began to learn how to read and write. They started to use familial letter writing to communicate with each other. As a result of progression, writing has become easier and more efficient when more people could read and write. The industrial revolution made it even easier for people to become efficient readers and writers.  With the invention of the printing press and other printing tools like a type writing, digital writing emerged and changed the way people do things like selling and teaching. With the advancement of technology during the industrial revolution, more people become writers and publishers, which helped to shape the birth of American literature with explosion of essays, novels, poems, magazines, periodicals, autobiographies, biographies, journals, and brochures.  Thus, the industrial revolution changed the landscape of writing, which was based on agricultural innovation where people depended on quell pens to express how they felt to digitally type on a typewriter.

Visit this site for more details on how the industrial revolution affected changed in American society, including going from agrarian writing to digital texts: https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/industrial-revolution-in-the-united-states/

or

https://daily.jstor.org/student-writing-in-the-digital-age/   

 

How did digital writing come about?

 

Digital writing can be called digital texts. This form of writing has started back in the early days of American society when reading and writing were only afforded by people in high and elite social statuses. With the advancement of technology and innovations during the industrial revolution, writing has taken a new form. People and companies started using different written methods to communicate with their intended audiences. From using typewriters to news writing, people began to write more and more using devices like a computer and the Internet to exchange verbal expressions. With the first computer invented in 1822 and the invention of the Internet in 1983, digital writing began to dictate how people communicate.  For example, at a click of a link or tab, people can read a digital text from a publisher many miles away.  When Facebook and other social network applications began to emerge, digital texts or writing has become an integral part in people’s everyday lives.

 

 

The Pros and Cons of Digital Writing

The emergency of digital writing or texts began many years ago when the Digital Age took place in around 1980.  While digital writing has brought great benefits for people around the world, it also has it shares of disadvantages.  

 

What are some of the pros of digital writing?

 

People have used digital writing for various reasons, depending on their needs and audience.  When people use digital writing or texts, they can access the information at anytime and anywhere they need. With this accessibility, they do not need to carry anything with them like traditional writing such as books or magazines, which must be physically carried to certain places when people need them for different purposes. Digital writing or texts are stored with web-based services or cloud platforms. Once texts are stored digitally, owners can retrieve whenever and wherever they want. Unlike traditional writing, their writing work may be lost or damaged due to a list of reasons, such as unfortunate house fire, natural disasters, and occasional moving.  Digital writing or texts can allow people easy access to modifications. For example, an author can log into his or her web-based text and make modifications. Unlike traditional writing, authors have to edit and revise the original text and reprint, which is costly to do.

 

With the benefits of digital writing or texts, users have encountered many disadvantages. One major disadvantage of digital text is the ability for hackers to track down users’ locations and identities. This unfortunate thread makes digital writers vulnerable at anytime because they are likely to be victims of online fraud.  While digital texts or writing can be easily access to users worldwide, they may not have the opportunity to use digital texts if unfortunate events like hurricanes that take out power sources that are needed to access the information.  Digital writing can be easily stolen or copied without the original owners’ permissions. 

 

With the benefits of digital writing or texts, users have encountered many disadvantages. One major disadvantage of digital text is the ability for hackers to track down users’ locations and identities. This unfortunate thread makes digital writers vulnerable at anytime because they are likely to be victims of online fraud.  While digital texts or writing can be easily access to users worldwide, they may not have the opportunity to use digital texts if unfortunate events like hurricanes that take out power sources that are needed to access the information.  Digital writing can be easily stolen or copied without the original owners’ permissions.

 

The Implications of Digital Writing

 

Digital texts or writing will continue to be here on this Earth for years to come. Regardless of the purposes, needs, and interests, people can weigh the pros and cons when they plan to express themselves with written communication for certain audiences.  Digital writing will continue to play a great part in people’s everyday life, especially for students, teachers, and professionals whose daily tasks involve thinking, extracting, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, and writing different forms of written expressions for different purposes and audiences.  Therefore, people need to embrace digital writing with caution and critical thinking as a form of communication that can shape how people express themselves in the real and virtual worlds because humans on the present planet Earth cannot keep using the traditional form of writing to communicate with people as the human inhabitants have completely revolutionized different, if not better, ways to communicate with each other. The video link below expressed how technology has played an integral role in people’s life, especially students and their ways of learning: Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all? (brookings.edu).


Works Cited

James Wright.   The Evolution of Writing. International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral

            Science, Elsevier, 2014. Retrieved June 4, 2023, from

            https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/

 

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