Assimilation of Technology

Rushkoff puts forward that technology is some how losing the complexity of life. That somehow we as human-beens lose the idea that not everything is black and white. What Rushkoff is lacking is basic knowledge of the way things work and the interactions that can take place on the internet.

The internet is a monstrously complex engine where millions of people go to absorb, share, and distribute information. Even on a metaphorical level where we view the internet only as a entity relationship mapping. We notice a large complex three dimensional web were connections exist all over the web some brighter than others leading to larger sections where majorities and even minorities of people surf. With this we be can see common ideas and options we can see how people are connected ... a similar phenomenon can be seen on Wikipedia where you can try and click links to see how long it take you to find another subject. The links are very similar to the thoughts of other individuals and could be taken as a hard representation of how people connect seeing as people were the ones who authored the articles instead of one man. It can be taken further in that the advent of the internet has made the world immensely more complex and thus life more complex.

Thats the end of this rant and it has been shown that the internet encourages a more complex life. Even with all the ease and speed of the internet things have become more complex or at least as complex as life before the internet.

The Return

Reading is a fickle thing, in that, it is the act of identifying characters, parsing them, and reassembling meaning out of the input string. In some way reading encourages learning, memorization of parsed strings, and in others its stored temporarily as though it was only read for immediate consumption. Personally i like to absorb all strings that i read in a cool comfortable environment where the act is unchallenged by outside noise. Another ideal when it comes to reading is that i would prefer it be on paper or on eink (like my kindle) though if im just trying to absorb information fast ill take to skimming online documents.

People these days are reading less books, but they are not reading less. People with the notion that reading is exclusive to books have a dated image of what reading is. Whether people want to admit it or not is that they are reading all the time due to the internet not in-spite of it. All those pdf's, blogs, news sites, exc. count as reading. Though the traditional book is making a comeback in a non-traditional form ergo the kindle. The future and present of reading is on the computer and until this is recognized as a legitimate form of reading then people will still be under the blind assumption that no one reads.

The difficult part that people will have to get past is the definition of what is reading and a new challenge is the advent of twitter. The question often asked is 150 characters enough to express your feelings such that its considered reading? The general replay is that a haiku that is general limited by syllables reading?

Incomprehensible language: a generational trend

Are the words we write and our speech patterns now a product of the internet? Yes, yes they are, but its not new for the English language to change.

The English language is constantly changing due to regional dialects, speech patterns, and people just creating new words for new thinks. This is a fact that has always amazed or angered people depending on the time period or context. Take for example William Shakespeare who had great innovations on how we speak today and some would say revolutionized the English of his time period. People didnt speak the same as he wrights in his plays, per-say, but much of his logical patterns and words wore copied over and over again tell it was the norm.

Now im not saying we are all on the level of Shakespeare, but every now and then some one misspells something that catches on or creates a shortened version of a word that catches on.

This is an example of a new word pattern that has cropped up in our language more and more. Why? Well thats easy, because its faster. The world has accelerated such that our speech must move forward with it. Many of the words used in this example are just shortened versions of words and expressions that are already in existence. (Oh my god, did you see? *laughing* talk to you later.)


Furthermore things that we take from the internet infiltrate our speech patters. Think back to the last time some one use lol instead of laughing or just said ttyl. Perhaps it hasn't happened to you yet but start listening to younger people talk lol.

tl;dr speech is changing again.

Reflections

Go back and reread the older blog post then return and you will get the feeling this blog has many good and great ideas and insight. Though this blog has been lacking in spelling and grammar. The only way that this flaw can be improved is by outside review.

It is also worth noteing that many of my topics were random. Random in that anything that was blogged about was chosen at a whim. Nothing, blog by blog, is consistent. Only two post can be considered professional and both those were recent and the idea was congered by a combination of this class and my computer securities class. Future post will be geared towards a professional sense.

Most likely nothing will be edited. Old post will be considered bench-markers for further post and will be used to build future and better post.

The only other complaint is the lack of links in each post. Though, most post were purely thoughts of my own and dont use other sources. When other sources are directly used or referenced then they are linked in the blog.