We are all writers now

We are all writers now

An interesting piece from the Economist’s More Intelligent Life: We Are All Writers Now. Twitter, Facebook, blogs like this one–they are all assumed to be “cheapening the language” according to this recently published article. Is it true?

From the story: “The chattering classes have become silent, tapping their views on increasingly smaller devices. And tapping they are: the screeds are everywhere, decrying the decline of smart writing, intelligent thought and proper grammar. Critics bemoan blogging as the province of the amateurism. Journalists rue the loose ethics and shoddy fact-checking of citizen journalists. Many save their most profound scorn for the newest forms of social media. Facebook and Twitter are heaped with derision for being insipid, time-sucking, sad testaments to our literary degradation. This view is often summed up with a disdainful question: “Do we really care about what you ate for lunch?””

What does the future hold?