We know that writing is one of fundamental part of human being. Mostly, we understand that by doing writing, we learn, we communicate, and we interpret so many things in life. It has been an important and even an essential tool in our social life. As student, I know how matter the writing is, inside and out of school. It becomes a key language skill that is to me, helps to understand subjects and my social life.
Most of us still describe writing in traditional way. An author who is sitting at desk, holding a pen or pencil and writing on a paper, or in a common way, people say "in black and white." It's true because it still exist.
But the fact that writing in the era of "Information Age" is also true. Since that, I assume you guys understand that living today has become even more complex with high technology. The invention of internet, such as "Web 2.0," "cloud computing," and "Read/Write Web" technologies make us see that integration features in internet is no longer as challenge in few years ahead, but as part of our living today.
Digital Writing Matters
The Information Age makes internet and all of its stuff always be invented, spaces and devices for creating and distributing writing also become more accessible and robust (National Writing Project, 2010, p.1).Â
Social networking especially and collaborative writing tools become interesting and nowadays we are able to write via instant and text message, blogs, etc. Writers can create texts which can be added with sound, polished in design, and integrated with image or graphic elements easily.
Today, you can see many people claim they are able to write. It happens because digital network facilitate many kind of writings, not only if you are a novelist. But it doesn't mean that digital writing is as simple as matter of learning about and integrating new digital tools into writing process in digital platform. Indeed, it changes how people create, compose, and share the writing. Digital writing could be defined (National Writing Project, 2010, p. 7)
"as compositions created with, and oftentimes for reading or viewing on, a computer or other device that is connected to the Internet... The bigger transformation in networked ways help us to share, distribute, and archive digital composition using internet."
Culture become the most powerful change if you take a look on how this digital writing changes the world (Grabill, 2012). Since it has been linked in network system, people often collaborate and coordinate in order to produce and distribute writings. For example, you can see how people leave comments on Facebook, make thread on Twitter, change information on Wikipedia, share or publish news in digital newspaper. Features in internet enable us to write in all sort of new ways.
Risk of Digital Writing
On the other hand, instant messaging as a result of digital writing could be harmful to young people's attention spans and even is suspected of encouraging carelessness with spelling and grammar. Digital Youth Project told us that young people are engaged in multipurpose relationship with digital media.Â
