Rise of the Future

With the rise of the internet new technology has of course been introduced and invented. This should not come as a shock, and is now more of an expectation that I would say most people have. Something that we rarely stop to think about though is how those things change us. Is it for the better? For the worse? Who can really make an accurate, if not indifferent judgment on these things? Take just now for example. At first I spelled judgment with an extra ‘e’ right after the ‘g.’ No big deal right? We all know what happens then (because we can see that there is no longer an extra ‘e’ there now we are able to conclude that my initial spelling was incorrect) the little red squiggly line comes up. So what did I do? I hit F7 for spell check, saw my mistake, and corrected it with the tap of my mouse. In an even more instantaneous example I Microsoft Word recognized when I spelled squiggly with only one ‘g’ and automatically added the second ‘g’ for me. If I had not been looking at the screen I would have missed it altogether and run the risk of not even seeing my mistake.

Now what would have happened even 5 years ago when I was in high school? Well for starters, I still wrote a lot of things out on paper where *Gasp* there would be no red squiggly line to tell me I had misspelled a word. My how things change. A pencil and paper is almost unheard of today, who has the time?

Obviously things change over time, but what are the effects of those changes? We never really stop and think about possible consequences at all. Perhaps my spelling skills will deteriorate over time and I will rely completely on Microsoft Word to tell me when I am wrong. In that case I would be trusting someone else entirely (scary, but a discussion for another time). How will a lack of spelling skills affect my life when I am trying to find a job (right now actually, anyone looking to hire me??), will that really have any affect at all? There are a lot of questions that need to be asked about our ever changing technological ecology, that is the way things are and how everything around us operates, which we as a society rarely ever question.

A recent article I read (online of course, who reads actual print except a textbook?) encouraged us to take a look at one of these issues: do writers even need paper anymore? Ha! Well that is a dumb question because of course writers need paper, what else would they write on……? But wait, you think. Do they really write on paper anymore? Most people write on computers. Especially for the reasons and examples I highlighted up above. It is convenient, easy, accurate, quick to edit. Seemingly in the blink of an eye the medium of print has gone…digital…

I do not feel that there are many guarantees we can discuss about what this will mean for the future, or how anything will really change us. But before you jump on board for the next technological fad just stop for a second and think about how different it is and how it will change you.

Source:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/10/books-electronic-publishing/