We were, once upon a time, forewarned that technological advancement would be our downfall; that by letting machines become our lives we would, in essence, lose our lives. I have long been a proponent of such a theory, even if only in rebellion against my computer obsessed family. I am a child of Thoreau not Jobs and prefer bad pickup lines in a bar to the failures of match.com. I believe every word of those silly Hulu commercials (despite Balwdin involvement, although, it does further prove my previous suspicions regarding the entire family) confessing to television's mind-melting agenda.
However, the advent of the iPhone's e-book application rising up to compete with Amazon's Kindle made me stop to consider. In the words of the great George W. Bush: Is our children learning?
We have, for so long, put such an emphasis on Wells' idea of decay by digital that we may have done ourselves a complete disservice. Sure, Wikipedia is a far cry from cold hard fact but we have long been subjected to, as students, lies our teachers told us. At the risk of sounding completely radical, a history book taught in course is nothing but a subjectivity worse than the internet as it is expected to be taken for face value.
The iGeneration (NOT to be confused with the ME-generation, no they're old news) write fanfiction, blog about philosophy and ethics on their own free watch, read books in the palm of their hands, outlap their parents and even older siblings on technology that even their professors don't understand.
Over all, 2009 and the impending twenty-teens, look to be marching steadily into the age of information not away from it. I fear that my carefully collected bookshelves of novels will soon be dubbed "terribly wasteful and un-green" by my more enlightened, Kindle and/or e-book toting children. With an unending wealth of information and more importantly, laissez-faire opinion sharing, our newest crop of technology indulgent offspring seem to be far enough away from The Time Machine's horrific ending to laugh at it, or at least type out an LOL.
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2 comments:
Ha! First comment... :)
Personally I do feel that ebooks are greener (duh) but all the scrolling and electronic page flipping drive me NUTS!
What a dilemma...
Yeah, it's terrible; I really love a book in my hands. It's something about turning the pages, turning down edges, wearing the spine that makes the entire experience. Ah, but it clashes so with my inner environmentalist!
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