饥荒阿比盖尔之花代码:互联网帮助人们提高写作水平的七大优势

哲夫·克伯 文

It’s easy to think that the world’s writing is going to hell via short messages and tweets, but Clive Thompson has an interesting piece in Wired this month (recommended) – based on the work of Stanford professor Andrea Lunsford – suggesting that we may in fact be in the midst of a writing and literacy revolution driven by the Internet.

短信、微博等新型写作模式的风靡，很容易让人感觉到传统的写作模式在世界范围内已是夕阳西下，但克莱伍·汤普森（Clive Thompson）本月在Wired网发表了一篇很有意思的文章（推荐），该文依据斯坦福大学教授安德烈·朗斯福德（Andrea Lunsford）的研究成果，指出我们现在可能置身于一场写作文化改革的大潮当中，互联网便是这场大革命的推动者。

Here are a few of the points from Lunsford’s work that Clive highlights, with a some added musings of my own:

克莱伍将朗斯福德有关互联网帮助提高写作水平的论说概括为如下几点，其中也融入了我个人的见解：

People are writing more

写作数量增加

Think about how much you write now if you engage in any form of social media at all – and, yes, you should include e-mail in that. Facebook, Twitter, short messaging on your phone. If you are doing any of these things, you are almost certainly writing a great deal more than your ancestors. Not that quantity and quality are the same, but writing more can certainly contribute to writing better.

 现如今，只要你利用某种社会媒介进行交流，你的写作量之大便可想而知，当然，写电子邮件也要算在内，此外还有Facebook，微博，手机短信等。如果你写过这些东西，你的写作量肯定远远超过以前的人。倒不是说数量多质量就好，而是说多写肯定有助于提高写作水平。

People are writing for an actual audience

写作有特定读者群

This is one of Lunsford’s most important points. In fact, she and her research team see writing as a sort of “performance.” A new generation of writers is now coming up that is very attuned to the fact that writing does not happen in a void – other people are reading, and often responding instantly. Lunsford found that this made the students her team studied highly adept at “assessing their audience and adapting their tone technique to best get their points across.”

这是朗斯福德的主要观点之一。事实上，她和她的研究小组将写作视为带有某种“作秀”性质。新生代作家正在崛起，他们的写作方式说明写作并非是在真空当中进行，有人会读你的作品，而且常常会立刻发表评论。朗斯福德发现，作为她小组研究对象的学生非常善于“揣摩读者的需求，并能调整写作口吻以传播自己的观点。”

People are learning to be concise

写作风格讲究简洁

140 characters or less. Need I say more? Well, given that Twitter is not as popular among the younger generations, it’s probably worth noting that brevity is a virtue in text messaging as well. And Lunsford maintains that this sort of text speak is not seeping into more “serious” writing,” as cynics may suspect.

不超过140个字，你懂的。如果不是年轻一代流行写微博，简洁的写作风格可能也不会成为一种美。而且，朗斯福德认为，这种口语化的写作风格不会像犬儒主义者担心的那样逐渐渗透到“严肃作品”中来。

People are writing more collaboratively

写作更具合作性

Clive’s article just barely touches on this point, but all of the tweeting and texting back and forth amounts to a sort of informal writing collaborative, often compelling participants to refine their ideas – even about the most trivial topics – and express them more clearly. And of course, there is plenty of more formal collaboration going on now using tools like wikis.

克莱伍的文章对此评论不多，但只要是这类简短的写作方式，一定是一来一往的对话模式，因而形成了一种非正式的合作性写作，常常会迫使对话双方不断梳理自己的思想（哪怕谈的是微不足道的小话题），以便使自己的语言表达更为明晰。当然，利用wikis等工具进行的正式合作性写作也在蓬勃发展。

People have access to more knowledge as they write

写作时知识面更广

I just interviewed Curtis Bonk, author of The World is Open (podcast will be out tomorrow), and one of the concepts he discusses in the book is “fingertip knowledge” – the ability to access huge stores of digital information rapidly. It’s not a given that this kind of access improves writing, but it certainly can, if only by making it much easier to find appropriate examples or verify facts. The ability to access different views on a topic rapidly can also help us refine our own views.

我刚刚采访过《开放的世界》（The World is Open）一书的作者克提斯·邦克（Curtis Bonk），明天上传播客视频。该书中谈到“手边的知识”这一概念，指的是迅速获取大量数字信息的能力。不是说这种能力可能有助于提高写作水平，而是一定有助于提高写作水平，只要例证或论据的查找更为方便。不同的人对同一个问题会有不同的看法，如果你能迅速了解各种不同观点，你自己的观点就会更为丰富，更为全面。

People place higher social value on writing

写作具有越来越高的社会价值

An extension of writing more, writing for an audience, and writing more collaboratively is that writing starts to take on more social value. Just as education is moving rapidly away from the “sage on the stage” model, writing is moving away from the lone wolf reporter or the tortured genius with a bottle of bourbon in the desk drawer. We all write much more to communicate, and communicating effectively through writing will be ever more important to getting ahead in the world.

写作除了数量增加，读者群固定，合作性增强之外，社会价值也越来越高。正如教育不断进步，讲课逐渐脱离“教师一言堂”的模式一样，写作也不再是作家关起门来拿瓶威士忌，自斟自饮，自说自话，虽才华横溢，但只能自我陶醉，而是写作更以交流为目的。通过写作进行有效的交流，对于世界的进步而言，意义更为重大。

People are blending writing with other media

写作与其它交流媒介不断融合

Successful writing on the Web is rarely just text. A writer may pull in a photo from Flickr, embed a YouTube video, or even do something more interactive like insert a poll. You can argue that this doesn’t make the writing better –and, indeed, could make it worse – but I think on the whole that the ability to blend more media can spark more creativity, cause us to reflect more on what text is actually good for, and ultimately allow us to communicate better.

成功的网络写作不仅仅是文字文本，还可能配有Flickr图片、YouTube视频等，甚至还可以设置在线调查以增强互动性。你可能会说，这些东西对写作本身没好处，可能反而有坏处，但我认为，总体而言，多媒体融合更具创意，促使我们对文本意义进行更多思考，最终，人与人之间的交流会更为顺畅。

So what do you think? Is all of the above just the wishful thinking of a highly-biased, Web-addicted blogger (aka me), or is the Web really making us better writers?

对此，你有什么看法呢？是否会觉得以上所言只是像我这样一个思想偏激，沉迷网络写作的人不切实际的幻想呢，还是认为网络的确有助我们提高写作水平呢？undefined

Jeff

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