Weekly Blog Post 2

Initially, I thought this video was really interesting. It made me realize that while we don't often consciously recognize the role technology plays in our lives, it has a significant impact on almost everything we do. Even something as simple as writing a sentence is taken to a whole new level by technology, as shown in the opening part of video.

The web offers a new medium and new ways to organize and present information, along with making information more accessible to a broader audience and increasing communication. With this new "information age" are new issues and norms, almost a whole new culture. We don't think twice about "googling" or "tweeting" while a few short years ago, most people didn't even know what MySpace was. In a few seconds, anyone could find this video and virtually anything else they wanted to watch on YouTube. Today, we update our Facebook statuses and "chat" with our friends to keep in touch. I recently had a conversation with some of my high school friends at a different college about how we would've kept in touch if there were no such thing as Facebook. Call each other? Write letters? How would we know each other's new addresses and phone numbers? How would we find out when the others would be home on break? The internet has completely changed how most people live and interact, especially in developed countries like the United States.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I disagreed with the basic idea of the video. Yes, the internet and technology play an increasingly huge role in our lives, but I wouldn't go so far to say that it's a machine that's controlling us. See, there's still people behind the phenomena of the internet. The web is just the medium that connects these people. Somebody wrote that article we found on Bing. There's an actual person who updates that blog. And while the format may be different, the purpose of Encyclopedia Britannica Online is still the same as the multi-volume hard-backed set in the reference section of the library. The internet has just made it a bit easier to access.

We don't need the internet for every aspect of life. We still write things in our notebooks with a pencil, we still walk to class every day, we still see and interact with people face to face all the time. Yes, we could type out notes on a laptop, we could take online classes, and we can email anybody any piece of information we could possibly think of, but I don't see a future where everyone lives in their own little box solely connected to the world through their computers. And we have to remember that not everybody has access to the internet. Much of the world doesn't even have electricity or clean water, much less wireless cafes.

Technology is a supplement to everyday life, not a replacement. We control how we use technology; it doesn't control us.

Weekly Blog Post 1

"Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself."
--Truman Capote

This quote stood out to me because of how true it is. Obviously, writing has certain rules and regulations, and for the most part, a writer is expected to follow those rules. However, that doesn't mean that a writer doesn't have any freedom to be creative. There's room to bend the rules a bit in order to fit the individual style of the writer and better serve the purpose of the writing.

If the purpose is to write a research report or an expository paper for a class, then the writer is going to have to follow the basic writing rules of grammar and organization, as well as any other directions from the instructor. This is necessary for many reasons: to keep the writing professional, to make the writing clear and understandable in an academic setting, and to get a good grade.

But if the purpose is to write a story or something more informal, there's a lot more room to play around with the rules. The story might be organized differently, or told from a different perspective. A story might be more effective if written in a first-person account, and many stories are written this way even though when learning to write, we are often taught not to use "I" in papers.

Grammar is another rule that can be bent by writers. Generally, correct grammar is necessary for writing to be considered "good," but again, this depends on the purpose of the writing. Take Mark Twain's novels. Huck Finn, being an uneducated boy from the South, wouldn't have spoken perfect, proper, grammatically correct English and so Twain didn't write him that way. The story is still there, still understandable, still relatable, and probably even more so for the conversational language and style used.

Going back to Capote's quote, he says that if you don't know the rules, learn them before rearranging them. The basic rules are important to learn because a good writer needs to first know how to write before being able to experiment and try different things. It's like learning how to walk before learning how to run.