What it means to be a writer in the
21st century has changed drastically from time periods before as
Lessig points out in his article “RW, Revived”. Before the 21st century writing had
different tactics. It was a lot more formal than it is current day and it was
strongly based off of writers quoting other writers to get their idea across.
This was because writers used “the words of others used to make a point that
others didn’t directly make” as Lessig pointed out. Instead of exampling and
analyzing their topic like they do today it was brought out through quotes of
others. I don’t believe this is efficient because readers can evaluate the
quote in whatever manner they want. In
the 21st century there is not as much quoting that goes on in
writing, it is a lot more informal. Because of the massive increase in the use
of technology in many aspects, the term writer has a looser meaning to society.
Today anyone can be considered a writer whether they have a
novel published or they wrote a tweet or facebook post. An example of the informal aspect in writing
today is the use of tagging, which is when you give a person you are writing
about a shorten name or nickname throughout your text. Lessig brought this out
in his example with Obama. I thought this was a good example of the changes in
writing from years ago to now because it shows how casual things are and not
everything has to be quoted or cited these days.
Writing
today would not of evolved as greatly if it wasn’t for technology. I do believe
that the emergence of digital technologies and web 2.0 allow for new ways of
composing. The internet alone, having blogging website and sites like twitter,
create an environment to write out their feelings and share it with the world
instead of having to go through publishing companies. Today almost anything in
a printed text form can also be accessed on the Internet, and is normally more convenient.
This erases the appeal to printed text allowing digital technologies to take
over.
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