Being scared is valid. Being silent is not. True, we are being bullied by the government, business, and other institutional powers. Gas prices are out of sight while the oil companies make record profits. Middle class folks can’t make their utility payments while luxury items such as yachts and private jets are being sold in record numbers to the rich and famous. Is that necessary, my daughter asks when we drive up to spend an evening at a house that has 6 garages, a living-room size game room for the kids complete with bowling alley, arcade games, pool table, ping pong table and lord knows what else. We will not go back to that house.

Okay gang, you complain among one another, but where is the collective voice, the loud voice, the voice that says, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Now here’s the topic connection — write, speak, boycott, make your feelings known.

DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As for knowing, in books, we learned content. Today, there is too much information in databases, so readers must learn how to access and manage information as opposed to filling their minds with material, albeit filtered through the eyes of the author, but content nevertheless.

For me, it’s books. I have stacks throughout my house. In fact, many books remain in their bags because I love the touch, feel, and smell (mostly) of new books. And at the rate I’m going, these books will be in their bags for a very long time. (Damn the Borders coupon program.

Now to the point, I’m reading an interesting and thought-provoking book titled The Gutenberg Elegiesby Sven Birkets. Birkets muses about reading, writing, and culture in both traditional and today’s high tech world. He asks a question that I often obsess over: “What is the place of reading and of the reading sensibility in our culture as it has become?”

He goes on to say: “Our era has seen an escalation of the rate of change so drastic that all possibilities of evolutionary accommodation have been short-circuited. … The way that people experience the world has altered more in the last fifty years than in the many centuries preceeding us.”

Wow, scary stuff. And the worst of it is, we have no way to evaluate or categorize these changes because of the speed with which they are occurring.

One change I dare to put on the table is that people are reading less, and younger generations are reading even less than that. What does this mean? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? How will society change? In what new ways will our culture evolve?

Friends, all I have is questions. Thanks to Mr. Birkerts to attempting to pose some answers.

Oil companies are making record profits

Pharmaceutical companies are raking it in.

HMO’s are doing very well

Yes, I am outraged, incredulous, and disgusted about the aforementioned, but I am more outraged, incredulous, and disgusted that the people of our country are taking it in silence. Seems we’ve lost the plate let alone who is standing up to it.

I’ve been around a while. I was around “back in the day” when there was an array of stores and products from which to choose. In this cost-driven, corporate-ruled economy we have come to be, the choices have narrowed both in products and places. A few provide for the multitudes, a few determine the fashions, the makeup, the colors. I don’t know about you, but I really dislike the current fashions. Young women look pregnant, and the colors are dark and drab. I can’t stand crocs, and then there are also the electric colors in sportswear that don’t go with anything but themselves (great marketing ploy – spend more, more, more). My feeling on it all is that I hate to go to the mall – it depresses me. Give me a thrift store any day.

What does this have to do with communication? Back to choices – as the choices narrow, and stores and restaurants are driven out of business, there is the piece about informing employees and customers. This isn’t happening. Workers are showing up for work, people are coming to shop or eat and surprise! The place is shut down, out of business, poof!

What kind of decent behavior is this? Simply slam the door in people’s faces with no warning or plan? How many of you have had this happen?

Here’s another one that happened to me recently. I am one of the millions of Americans who take an antidepressant, or happy pill as they are fondly known. I received a letter one day from my HMO saying that psychiatric drugs would no longer be covered (what in the hell is the logic in this? They will pay a zillion times more when depressed and bipolar, and other people succumb to physical disorders their happy heads fought off). I immediately called my HMO to ask about my specific situation and was told not to worry, that I would continue to be covered as I had been in the past. Relief. Short lived – when I went to fill my prescription a few weeks later, coverage was denied. I came home, called yet again, and was told that yes, my conversation with the representative was recorded, and yes, he had said I would be covered. However, a rather testy young man said I am not and will not be covered.

I ask you, is this piss poor communication? Is this a professional way to deal with customers? Is this a way to garner good will for when it’s needed in the future?

Yes, I am outraged, incredulous, and disgusted.

Question: Please discuss the changing nature of writing and how higher education should therefore prepare its students.

I think that the nature of writing has changed greatly in the past few years as the use of the internet has changed everything. Information can be found so easily, and people have attention issues because we are an age of immiediate satisfaction. This makes writing difficult because we, as students, do not want to sit and read through books for research, nor do we thoroughly search through all of the internet. We take what we need to support what we are saying. High education right now gives an assignment as followes. ” X thesis statement - 15-20 pages in length.” When in reality, our world is heading toward an age when length is not necessary because we will not be taking the time to read it. We will be taking the important facts from skimming, and moving on.

Therefore, higher education needs to prepare its students in brevity. The world is constantly changing, faster every year, we need to be able to keep up. But that also means to know basics of many more subjects. The fewer words you can get your point across strongly and successfully, the even stronger you will make your argument.

A little prelude first. I am one of those professors within those hallowed halls. But I work hard to keep my feet balanced in two worlds: academe, and business — specifically related to its writing and communication needs. It is my conclusion that we in higher ed do a lousy job of preparing students with the knowledge and skills they will need to successfully negotiate in this new world of digital communication. Read on for one student’s commentary. There will be more interesting student-authored entries to follow:

Student Commentary

While I do agree with Ellen’s (fictional name) response, we must teach students to explore all avenues of research, I feel as though most things that can be found in a book can be found online these days. So many books have outdated material in them, but they are still sitting on the shelves. I think the best way in which higher education can prepare its students is to teach them how to use the tools properly.

For example, because the woman from the library came in and talked to us about how to analyze a website, we now have the skills to determine the credibility. I don’t think it is as important to teach where the materials can be found, but rather how to sort through those materials.

As mentioned above, many professors do require page lengths for papers, and I have even had several that only allowed one Internet source. For the times we are in now, these requirements are ridiculous. In the business world, no matter what type of office or business it may be, no one wants to read through a long paper, when the point could have been made in the first paragraph.

Instead of teaching students to write more, higher education should be teaching them to write less, but in a more complete way. There is more learning and challenge involved in writing a shorter paper than a longer one because anyone can add useless information and unnecessary words.

Higher education needs professors to spend more time teaching the students how to write for real life situations than to meet the 20 page requirement.

Unfortunately, a difficult question without an easy answer. But do try to do your due diligence. Bring your prospect’s work to someone you know is a skilled and competent writer and ask her opinion. Also get yourself a copy of the classic gem, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. This little book will help you recognize good writing from bad in your quest to find a writer who will help you be proud to say “I Am What I Write!”

To learn about digital rhetoric, read Aristotle , Socrates (my personal favorite), Foucault, and Paul Gilster .

Short though it is, it hits on all those common and all too frequent and inexcusable errors that make us all look like slugs.

Enjoy and happy writing!

What is really heartbreaking about this is that so much communication in today’s world is now based on text — written communication in the forms of websites, email, chat rooms,. listservs, and so on. If we are then propelling this non-writing populace into the world, what are the potential ramifications for society, culture, government, business, religion, education, and more?

Anyway, scary stuff. Right now I do as much as I can by teaching students, courses in which grammar and structure beome a far greater percentage of the course than they should be.