Abdullah Assaf

1. You argued that the internet makes it harder to isolate yourself than be
involved, do you think that it was not already hard with things such as
television and phones?
2. You said that because of technology it is expected for everyone to be literate,
was this not expected before the internet or have more people just been able
to become literate?
3. Do the negatives of social media outweigh the positives, or vice versa, and
why?
4. Do you believe that peoples fear of negative feedback is due to the internet
or is it simply human nature?
5. What is the negative side of having so much information available?
6. Were authors before the internet at a disadvantage for reasons other than
just advertising?

I think your ideas were well developed and complete. One thing you could do that
would add to your arguments is provide examples of how the internet has bettered
things when it comes to being literate versus before the internet. Some of your
ideas make it sound as if things before the internet were a lot worse than they were.
I think you were right on the money when you said that ideas can be spread much
faster now than they ever have been able to in the past. Do you think that the
internet is more revolutionary than any other invention in writing? You could add
some counter arguments and explain why your point of view is better than those
arguments. Some things that might help your writing would be to do some research
and find out if there is any examples of someone who was struggling getting their
ideas out and then put it on the internet and it exploded. How much faster can ideas
spread and is there a negative side to the explosion of ideas? Overall I think your
paper did a good job of answering the questions and covered all of the bases,
theres just a couple things that you could add to make it even better.

Anthony Juneau
1. You state that the internet helps people be more socially literate, but do you
think it also makes people less socially active, simultaneously?
2. People could learn about other cultures in books and through tv shows before
the internet, what exactly has the internet done to help people become
more culturally literate?
3. Most dictionaries dont have slang but they have the majority of words, do
you think not having slang detracts from their usefulness?
4. Malcom X might not have been able to be on the computer all day long, but
do you think that even a little bit of access could have been immensely
helpful to him?
5. How would the internet have affect the spread of his ideas?
6. How would the internet have affected Deborah Brandt?

Your paper seemed good but somewhat incomplete to me. You briefly spoke about
Malcom X but completely ignored how the internet would have affected Deborah
Brandt and her work. I think adding, at the very least a couple sentences, things
about her would have added to the arguments your paper is making. You briefly
touched on computer literacy but did not go in depth about what it does and what it
means. I think computer literacy is for sure a new form of literacy, you are right
about that, but what does it mean? I think it is huge because if you are not literate
in that sense then you can be left behind and lose access to all the information that
the internet has to offer. This is a large piece of information that you left out and
would have been a good thing to talk about in your writing. You wrote about people
being able to see many forms of media for free, but what does this mean for
people? You said it impacts their lives but in what way does it impact their everyday
lives? Overall, your paper had the correct ideas and is a good start, but I think that
you can add several things to your arguments to strengthen them.

Gabriel Brea
1. You said that many people are overwhelmed by longer passages, are they
overwhelmed or do they just not want to read them?
2. Does condensed writing have a place in society, if so, where?
3. You said that writing used to be more detailed, are current books, papers, and
letters not detailed?
4. You stated that writing in the 19th century was hard to come by because it
was hand written and the printing press was not around, the printing press
was invented in 1440, how does this change your argument?
5. Do you think the way that social media may or may not have affected
Malcolm X would have been more positive or more negative?

Your paper had a couple ideas that I question but your writing was fairly complete
and answered all of the questions overall. One of my questions for you was if people
are overwhelmed by larger texts or if they just do not want to read them out of
laziness; I think that people are not overwhelmed by them but simply do not have
the drive or internal motivation to read them. I would like to see more detail in your
paper about this idea and why you believe that people are overwhelmed by longer
texts. Another point that I had an issue with was your statement about writing not
having any detail in it in todays world. I think that books, papers, and other articles
have an immense amount of detail in them still. You are right that tweets or status
updates might not have as much detail, but this is only one form of writing and you
discounted all of the other types of writing that are out there. On the flip side I
completely agree with your statement about Malcom Xs ideas being able to spread
much faster if he had twitter or facebook or any social media. One last thing I
questioned was why you think Deborah Brandt found it hard to find works from the

19th century. The printing press was invented in 1440 and was around for a long
time before the 19th century. Things like books have been put on the printing press
since its conception. Is there another reason you think she may have struggled to
find works from this period?

Emily Andries
1. What do new innovations in the technology sector do for writing or literacy?
2. Using slang is common on the internet but not widely accepted in formal
writing, do you think it should be allowed in other places and why?
3. You said that knowing how to spell is no longer necessary because of the
internet, but dictionaries have been doing the same thing spell check does for
a lot longer; is not knowing how to spell a new occurrence or has it been
around for a while?
4. Is there value in doing research by hand in the library versus just using
google?
5. How would the internet have affected Deborah Brandt?
6. Is there a negative side of having so much information at our fingertips and
why?
Your paper had a very clever title. You had some interesting ideas but I think that
you could have gone a bit more in detail with them. You said that social media has
blurred the lines of literacy and illiteracy, but is the line between literacy blurred or
just the conventions of grammar blurred? There are a couple things that you could
do to add to the meaning of your paper, in my opinion. I think that you could add
how the internet would have affected Deborah Brandt and her works. I think it
would have changed her definition of literacy. That was a piece of the question that
you did not answer in your paper. You could have skipped the history of the internet
portion of your paper because it did not really add anything to your paper. I agree
with your idea about Malcolm Xs ideas being able to spread faster if he had been
able to tweet things. You should elaborate on that a little more and explain why.
Overall your paper was good, but it had some unnecessary fluff that could have

been replaced with other thoughts or arguments that were more beneficial, also you
should have added something about Brandt and her work.