Prove It

In chapter 6 of A Better Pencil by Dennis Baron, there is tons of history of the computer and how it affected writing and writers. There were several great points in this chapter, but one especially caught my attention. Baron discussed how the clunkiness and frustration of writing words instead of numbers on PCs kept many writers on their typewriters and with pens in their hands. He wrote "most writers . . . wait for technology to prove itself before changing how they do things" (105). I could certainly see myself in that statement, though in a different situation.

I came to texting a couple years after it became the main utilization of thumbs. I guarded my flip phone the way people guard their latest smartphone. If I wanted a new phone and texting, I had to pay for it myself. I could have; I had a job and not much to spend it on while in high school, but I didn't. Why? Because I was a snob. Maybe snob is not the best word--wait, no. That's the best word I can come up with. I was a snob in that I thought myself superior to my peers by not giving in to the temptation to gadgets and ways of communication I didn't need. Sounds ridiculous now, but believe me, I felt like a warrior. Guarding against the enemy of unnecessary technology that greedy companies sold to naïve and pathetic persons who had no noble cause to give their money and attention to.

Source: http://www.ivy-style.com/confessions-of-a-preppy-snob.html

Yeah; I was sad. Very, very sad.

This snobbery did not last long. Nearly all of my friends texted; if I felt left out and envious of my peers who could communicate with each other while on opposite ends of the school, I repeated "Texting is dumb; there is no need for it. It will ruin language and social skills. Society will collapse", like a war chant.

I entered college and grew up a little. I hated being the sole person to have to call and be called to discuss for half a minute what was going on. I couldn't just send a couple words to a friend. I had to wait for someone to pick up their phone and actually speak to me. Countless awkward situations occurred. Finally, after one particularly mortifying incident, I broke down and got texting. Words cannot express how glad I am that I got it. I, of course, acted like I had to get it if I ever wanted to socialize again; like there was no way around it: a necessary evil.

Very shortly after I acquired texting and got the hang of it, I felt like an idiot and I still look back on my self and go "Wow. You were an idiot."

As Baron said, it had to proven that texting would make my life easier before I agreed to use it.

Keyboard vs. Pen

As an attempting writer, I have thought about whether or not I like to write with a pen to paper or keyboard to a screen. At first, before I got the hang of quick typing, I preferred handwriting. Now, I almost always prefer typing on a keyboard. There are certain genres, if you will, that I enjoy typing more than handwriting and genres I prefer to handwrite instead of typing.

For instance, notes are one thing I do not like to type. I'm not sure why; maybe because I handwrite faster than I can type. Plus, I do not misspell as much when I handwrite; when I type, I backspace like, 40% of the time. Of course, I am less likely to be tempted to surf the web or check my email a dozen times when I have just a notebook in front of me. If I am outside, too, I prefer pen and paper. I cannot wander far for inspiration if I am stuck to the back patio. I can sit in a tree (yeah, I'm weird like that) or stretch out in a field and write away without having to worry about my computer needing to be charged. Could someone please make an outlet that can work in a tree? That would be great.

Handwriting also makes me slow down--my hands and mind. I tend to construct sentences and am more conscious of what I write down when my hand is directly putting down what my brain wants it to. Handwriting forces my mind to slow down and actually think through my thoughts. I think I tend to write better when I handwrite.

On the other hand, typing on a keyboard helps me to get down everything I was thinking. God forbid I forget something that pops into my head. Still, I do forget things, and I get less writing accomplished if I am on the computer, because I have the internet. As I’ve written before, I could disconnect the internet. But I won’t; my shame is not great enough to do so.

Source: http://www.learntyping.org/learntypingvideointro.htm

I prefer typing for anything school related other than notes. I don’t have a choice, in a sense. When I write an essay, I have to type it up in the proper format and print it out all nice and shiny. For my creative writing, I like the computer, too, because if I need to do research, it is right there. I can easily refer back to something without juggling a notebook and laptop. Typing makes the writing appear neater. This might be con, though. Not seeing the improvement in your writing can erase the lesson you learned. For example, if I see the mistake I scratched out on paper, then I am less likely to repeat that mistake. On Microsoft Word, that mistake can be completely erased.

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Have-Good-Handwriting

I like handwriting more for the romanticism of it. There is a certain nostalgia that I, even as a millennial, have. The “old days” of intense practice to learn cursive and legible penmanship were more laborious, but now there is something whimsical about it. In movies, a writer is always shown with pen and paper; it paints an image of artistry and intimacy that is absent from typing.


I do not know what mode I will prefer in a few years, especially (hopefully), when I become a professional writer. It is more probable than not I will spend most of my day typing instead of handwriting. Even so, writing with a pen and on paper will never die.

If I Were to Teach

We have a final project in my digital writing class. Basically, we are to pick a medium that we would use to create a fresh Writing in the Digital Age class. We already use quite a few digital mediums in the class to learn: Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Blackboard, and blogs. A couple of questions to prompt ideas that caught my attention are "What do you want to learn in this class and why?" and "What skills, issues, topics, theories, and questions should we consider?". I want to address these questions in my version of the class.

To begin with, I kind of know what I want to learn--what skills I want to have. One, how to be successful online. It was briefly mentioned in class, but nobody seemed to know the answer. I think I'd like to learn the key to success by interviewing popular Youtbers and bloggers, such as John Green and Aidan Moher (my geek side is showing). On the other hand, I would like to teach this by having students create blogs and then go out and interview successful bloggers and Youtubers. If they cannot get an interview, then research how that person became a digital icon. In addition, experimenting with their own blogs.

The second thing I would like to learn is how to network online. I thought it would be easier than networking in the real world, but I honestly don't even know where to start. I mean, I have a blog and I follow several large participants in the industry/discipline I wish to work in, but besides, that, I don't know. I've been told to create a LinkedIn account. I haven't because, quite frankly, I haven't a clue what I'd do on it. I know in general what it is and what it is used for, and yet, I feel like even if I did figure it out, I still wouldn't be able to network. I suppose I'd teach students how to network online by having them explore it themselves, and I'd learn along with them. To do this, I'd have them follow blogs, commenting and posting pieces relative to what they learned on other blogs.

I suppose networking and success are related. If you are successful online then you are good at networking or you at least know how; if you have a large, knowledgeable network then you are successful online. The question is, how to actually get to the point where your network is good and your success is more than your family and friends commenting and liking your online stuff.

Why do I want to learn this? Because having an online presence is crucial. Networking is crucial too, among other things. Employers are looking for people who can tweet and make an alluring website while also having other skills. As most of my classmates and I are millennials, the assumption that we are skilled in all things digital might be unfair (see I Don't Know Everything post: http://lizloch.blogspot.com/2015/09/i-dont-know-everything.html), but it's not necessarily something to be angry with. The world, whether you like it or not, is digitized. People like technology. And they like technology that works and helps them "better" their lives. They do not look in the Yellow Pages anymore for a company's name, they Google the company and get the number from the company's webpage that they can access on their phones. Even the most traditional institutions, such as the Catholic Church, have their own websites, Twitter handle, and Facebook page.

In general, I want to have blogs as my medium for my project, and the themes I will explore will networking and being successful through them.

I may not always be thrilled about the digitalization of the world, but I can't very well escape it. I don't really want to. I want to learn how to be successful online not just for professional reasons, but also because I have a digital life I wish to maintain.

It's Complicated

Don't worry. This post is not about a romantic relationship with another human being. It's much worse than that. This post will be about my relationship with the internet. Trust me, it is very complicated.

On the one hand, I LOVE the internet. I'm definitely the stereotypical millennial who can't take her eyes off the screen. I will spend hours on the internet doing various things--at the same time. When I first got my laptop, it was bad. And I mean bad. Like, I need to go AA meeting for internet addicts bad. Thankfully, I've gotten a handle on it. Still, I am more active on the World Wide Web than ever before. I have three or four personal accounts on social media. In addition, I have to do research for personal writing projects and school papers, and I have an online class. It's rare that I don't have to be connected to the internet for a school assignment. It's even rarer that I do not turn on my laptop. I can count on one hand the amount of days I have not even turned on my beloved computer. One, two . . . three? I'm feeling optimistic: let's go with three days out of two months of summer.

Maybe I do still need Internet Addicts Anonymous.

On the other hand, I am terrified of and frustrated with the internet. It has a hold over me that I'm sure is shared by many people. A hold that I daily allow to be exercised. For example, I listen to music or watch a Youtube video every morning while I get ready for the day. Sometimes my music is from iTunes, but often it is Spotify because of the variety. If Spotify for some reason is not working properly for some reason, I get upset and irritated. I might just have five minutes before I have to leave, but I will still attempt to fix the problem.

Then there's the distraction side. I've written about this before, but I think it's worth mentioning again. My number one issue with getting homework finished is getting distracted by the internet. Whether my homework has to be done with the aid of the internet or not, I have at least one other tab open. Half the time I don't even care what I'm looking up. I'll write a paragraph for an essay then open Pinterest or even just Google. I'll look up random things that I'm indifferent too. It's almost like I'm forcing myself to be distracted by the internet. As I'm writing this, I have three tabs open. One is for music; the other two are taking up tab bar and mental space. I feel like I have to keep them open, too. If I close them, it is both a relief and concern: what if I missed something important? The probability of missing something truly important on the internet is not great at all.

Some days my discipline is good, even great. Others, it is lacking to the point it takes me three hours to finish one assignment that should take me a half hour. Or, if I'm doing something personal on social media, I get distracted with other social media. See what's happening? No matter what I'm doing, the internet hampers me. Of course, it does help. Easybib.com and online databases from a university's library are blessings to be sure; music also helps me concentrate--mostly. Social media can increase the chance of being noticed by potential employers . . .  while at the same time scaring them away if you post something distasteful. All in all, I love the internet. I'm pretty sure I'd deeply mourn the loss of it. But I also wish I could ignore it. I suppose I could turn it off or disconnect my computer from it, but that's not likely to happen.

I Don't Know Everything

We've talked a lot in my class about how millennials are the go-to people for technology woes and lack of knowledge. I'm sure every traditional college student has been asked by at least one of their parents to help with an email or online account. And I'm sure every one of us has sat in front of a relative's computer and said, "I have no idea what I'm doing." I've had that once or twice . . . or thrice.

Megan O'Neil wrote Confronting the Myth of the 'Digital Native'. She writes that in reality the knowledge of and skill level with technology that 'digital natives' possess is actually quite diverse (2). If you're a millennial and have friends who are not all the same, then you will know this is true. I, for one, do not have as near as much detailed knowledge as my computer science/informatics major friends do. When I think about it, my skills with technology only scrape the surface of what I could learn and know.

Would I like to know more? Sure I would. But there are other things I would rather study than all the little shortcuts and intricate workings of the internet and a laptop. It's also quite easy to learn something about modern technology: the internet, whether you use Bing or Google, can answer just about any question. If I really want to know something, I can just type in a simple question and wala! answer right at my fingertips.

Also in O' Neil's article is a quote by Ms. Hargittia, "Assuming that young people know all they need to know about technology means they often don’t have opportunities to learn or ask questions" (3). I don't know about anyone else, but I would have liked to have felt comfortable asking about Facebook in high school. Asking about Twitter or Instagram now is my dilemma. I am more comfortable with asking questions, but I feel like if I ask about Instagram or something I still don't know how to work on Facebook, my peers will look down their noses at me or at least chuckle derisively. Not that I haven't ever rolled my eyes or sighed when my mother asked me how to forward an email. Still, I think there is a lot to consider about presuming digital natives are gurus of all things new, shiny, and technical.

My knowledge of social media and the internet is average, but my skills with phones is lacking considerably. If a flip phone is the Stone Age of phones, then my LG sliding keyboard is the Iron Age. It works great for me, but when a friend hands me her Windows smartphone or iPhone 6 (what number are they on?), I stare at the screen like it's hieroglyphics. On the other hand, people seem to forget, at least temporarily, how to work old technology. If I give my phone to a friend, she usually asks me how to do this or that on it, even though it's a stone tablet.

I could make a call to action here, but I won't, because in truth, I do not think being considered a digital native a big deal. I might get embarrassed every now and then when someone middle-aged asks me to cure her computer's ailment, but besides that, I don't think it's much of an issue. After all, companies are looking for people who can utilize all the new technology out there and from what I have seen myself, there is no better way to learn new technology other than to dive right in--with a tad bit of caution, of course.

Bibliography: O' Neil, Megan. "Confronting the Myth of the 'Digital Native'" The Chronicle of Higher Education (2014): n. pag. 21 Apr. 2014. Web. 29 July 2015.           

Looking for Me

So. I just looked up my name on Bing. I did not expect the results.

My name is everywhere on the internet. I thought that my last name was uncommon, since I had never met another person with it. My first name is more common. Evidently, both my first name and last name in combination too are kind of common.

On the first page of results, only one is actually mine. It's my Facebook page. I wonder if it's because I've had longer than any other account. I found a twitter, whose name was the same as mine, but it was not my twitter handle. There were also several LinkedIn accounts, a couple even from the UK. Amongst the LinkedIn accounts were jewelry makers and sellers, an author (maybe it's a sign!), and even imdb accounts.

It was a little weird to see my name all over the place, but I suppose I was not as creeped out since only on was actually my account. What was freaky was to see a few obituaries. I mean, I'm not even twenty-one yet, so I'm not worried about dying, but it's strange to think that some people know a deceased loved one by my name. To them, so-and-so is gone. When I saw the first obituary, I kind of cringed and thought, "Well, that will be me one day. I'm not immortal, unfortunately." And yet, the internet kind of makes you immortal.

We spoke in class about old Myspace accounts. One of my classmates did some googling and found her old account, even though she had not been on it for years. Will my Facebook account pop up after I die? How long will it take to be lost in the infinite sea of personal accounts, if ever? If a hundred years pass, and my grandnieces and nephew want to see what Great Aunt Lizzy did on the ancient internet of the old days, would they be able to find my twitter and facebook accounts? It would certainly teach them quite a bit about me: what I liked, what I ignored, who I was friends with, who I communicated with, and so on. We know most about ancient civilizations if they leave writing behind. In a hundred years, or even less, we will be looking back on the internet and popular social media in order to discern what life was like "back then".

Unprepared for the Future

In the article Teaching and Learning with Social Media by Alice Daer and Liza Potts, it is discussed how social media can be a tool for teaching students. They give warnings about how to treat it and the use of it in the classroom while also defending the great benefits of it. This may sound like it's going to be a boring post, but I hope not. Because the article has taken me back to when I was still in high school.

Brace yourselves: we're having a flashback.

I was a junior when every student in my high school got an iPad; an iPad 2, to be exact. It was the coolest thing out there in 2011, ages ago in internet time. My friends and I felt like the bee's knees (did I really just use that simile?). I strutted around with my iPad and wasted no time becoming addicted to it.

The goal of the iPads was, the school's administration said, to improve learning and literacy of technology. Well, technology literacy certainly improved, both for the students and the staff, but I would not say learning. Our textbooks from then on were supposed to be available as ebooks. Uh, yeah no. Publishers were not prepared and did not have the formatting to convert all their textbooks into ebooks. The only etextbook I had my last two years of high school was a lone precalculus book. In reality, the iPads began to serve a different purpose: emailing and distraction. I passed AP Biology mainly because of Google. I tried the book, but it was like two encyclopedia's into one, and the worksheets spread out over several chapters. There was no point to spend hours upon hours scouring the book when I could look up twelve answers in one minute. I still learned, but in a different way. I got my homework finished amidst navigating Facebook and music/movie websites. It may be considered cheating, but if you give a teenager a computer that she can glue to her hand, don't expect her to ignore the easy access knowledge.

I'm not trying to have technology thrown out of classrooms--not at all. I love the class I'm in that I made this blog for; I love live-tweeting and reading my classmates' blogs. The big difference between my college experince with the latest technology and the internet and my high school experince is that by the time I entered college in 2012, most colleges were prepared for social media and the presence of the latest technology; publishers had figured out how to make and sell textbooks and ebooks.

I don't regret the experience with the iPad, but I think it's vitally important to be prepared for technology in the classroom. Daer and Potts speak specifically about social media, but I would have to write two more posts to cover what I have to say about that and I will not do that today. Anyways, technology, the lastest, that is, in classrooms because there is no doubt my friends and I became more internet literate through the use of the iPad--albeit while using it in ways we technically weren't supposed  to.

Technohopes

My most recent post was about my technofears; now, I'm going to talk about my hopes regarding technology. My hopes are both personal and professional.

My first and foremost hope is that I can have some sort of book-related career on the Internet. I am a huge booklover (something you probably figured out) and follow author and other booknerd blogs. Twitter is great for direct interaction with bookish people, but blogs are deeper and can be more intimate. I have gotten to understand and "know" favorite authors and booknerds because of their blogs. And since I am not their only fan, a larger, virtual community with real people as members is created. In these communities, I have made friends and have learned more than I ever would have about reading, publishing, and books than I would have otherwise.

I do not expect to be a celebrity blogger (though I wouldn't necessarily mind); that is not why I review books on Goodreads. Sure, I want other reviewers to like and comment on my reviews, and I love seeing the increasing amount of pageviews on this blog, but that is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to become a better, recognized digital writer, in addition to creating a community similar to the book communities I belong to but with unique characteristics. This is personal goal I have with technology, although a professional career can be tied into it.

My professional goals in life are inextricably woven with technology. I want to be some kind of writer, including a travel writer and a fiction author, and I want to be an editor. Every writing career is related in some way to technology, specifically the internet. Many writers--travelers, fiction, nonfiction, academic-- have found audiences online that they never would have gotten otherwise. For example, John Green. Everyone knows John Green (if you don't, stop reading this right now and go look him up! Link below). He began vlogging with his brother about nerdtastic things such as books, science, and history. When he published his first book, his Youtube audience, Nerdfighters, flocked to read his stories. His popularity grew. And grew. And grew some more. Now, he is one of the most loved Young Adult writers. Another example is self-publishing. The most famous would have to be E.L James and Fifty Shades of Grey. This controversial yet undeniably popular story was first an ebook before a traditional publisher picked it up. There is no denying that technology helped to launch both these authors careers.

Some bloggers have actually produced books because publishers saw that they wrote well in their blog posts. Others have made careers with books and writing that have never been seen before, such as running book websites like Bookriot (link down below). The book lovers who run this website are literally paid to obsess and spread the Word of Books online. Now that is a career I would climb Mt. Everest for. I'd probably die but there has to be worse things than dying for books.

So there you have it. My hope for technology is to be successful in my personal and professional endeavors while utilizing it. It's a long shot, considering anyone can post online. Only a few succeed, and I hope/plan to be one of them. I will likely never be famous, but there's no harm in dreaming and using technology to its fullest potential for your own goals.

Links:
Bookriot: http://bookriot.com/
John Green: https://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers

When to Write, When to Play

    Ever since I was in grade school, I'd panic and feel like a disgrace if I missed an assignment. Fast forward into high school, and I had several hours of homework every night. I'd stay up until two in the morning at least once a week just doing homework even if I started after school. I usually finished everything. The nights I didn't, I was usually too tired to care until the class I did not finish the homework for rolled around. Then I was anxious all class, unable to look my teacher in the eye.

    What does any of this have to do with digital writing? Well, for one, writing on this blog is part of my homework. It isn't difficult, but when you are driving and running all day even on weekends, writing anything can be a stressful event. Right now, I'm not stressed at all about this blog; I'm worried about another class. I suppose I should not have put the assignment off, but I was doing homework for other classes. My assignment is to write an essay on a memory then translate it into a poem. Yeah, it's as wonderful as it sounds.

The reason I'm scrambling to complete this essay and poem is not that I procrastinated (though I am guilty of that at times) or that I forgot (forgetting to do homework is like forgetting to brush my teeth after a breakfast); it's that I went to go see fireworks this weekend. I bet a lot of people reading this went to go see the fireworks, and they were impressive, but when I woke up this morning, this Labor Day, I was exhausted. I thought I could get the essay finished before a family gathering. I was very wrong.

    I was so tired to the point I could not keep my eyes open. So, I slouched in the couch and took a nap. I woke up with just enough time to finish my essay, but not edit it. Because I went out last night after work instead of writing this essay, I am panicking and cursing myself for not being able to choose between socializing and homework.

    So this is my dilemma: when do I stop writing and go experience life, and when do I stop experiencing in order to write? Where is the balance? High school I was awful at balancing my personal creative life and my social life. Purely awful. I either spent all week doing nothing but homework or all week doing nothing but going to school events and hanging out with friends. Somehow, some way, I passed all of my classes, but not without many nights of frustration and mornings of zombie-like oblivion.

    Do I go out this weekend even if I have a lot of homework to do because next weekend there is nothing going on? With writing assignments and creative writing for my personal endeavors complicates this question. I want to be a writer, but I now I have to go out and have experiences in order to write about them. I can imagine and sympathize with character experiences in books, but I cannot truly understand until I actually participate. As Gandalf said in The Hobbit, "The world is not in your books and maps. Its out there." I cannot remember if this is from the book or just the first movie exclusively. Even so, there is a lot of truth in the phrase.

    Still, the question is, when is it time to put down the pen or shut off the computer to go play and participate in the world, and when is it time to write about what you saw and experienced? There has to be a balance. Maybe I'll just figure it out one day and shout "Eureka!" and be thrilled I'm finally finished with the wondering. Or, maybe I never will. Myabe I'll be doomed for the rest of my life to make these damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't decisions. Perhaps writers never figure out the perfect balance--if there is even such a thing.

Technically Afraid Part 1

Like most millennials, I love technology. I love computers, tablets, smartphones, iPads, iPods, laptops, iPhones--did I miss any? Doubtless I did. There are just so many gadgets to chose from and afford, how could anyone own all of them? Most of us are on our way. I, for one, have a laptop, phone (a dumb one), and an iPod. So, I do not have as much as some of my peers, but that will probably change once I graduate and having a decent paying job. It's inevitable, too, that I'll be wishing for more technology after I have the latest. Once I get the latest smartphone or Apple watch, I'll be wanting the Next Big Thing-- and I don't care.

What I do care about is what some of the Next Big Things will be. There has been talk for quite a few years about artificial intelligence. I'd say we already have artificial intelligence, considering all computers and other gadgets are smarter than me. I couldn't even put one back together if I took it apart, while Siri will tell you what the capital of Liechtenstein is (it's Vaduz, thanks Google). In my Writing for the Digital Age class, my professor said, if I remember correctly, that artificial intelligence is considered intelligent if the technology can communicate i.e. speak back to you, something along those lines. If that is the general consensus, then we've have already achieved that. Even if the average laptop cannot answer me verbally as Siri can, it can respond to my question. If my laptop did talk back to me, however, I think I'd be more intrigued than freaked out. This might sound strange, but I really would not mind if my laptop or iPod had a conversation with me-- as long as I was expecting it. I have a very different opinion for machines that talk back without my prior knowledge.

So what am I really, truly afraid of with technology? I have two that are often on my mind. The second I will address in my next post. The first is small and only makes me pause every once and a while: staring at a screen all day will ruin my eyes. And not only that, the act of sitting for several hours nonstop is not healthy. I've had crappy eyesight since I was in the second grade, and it continued to get worse until recently, and until recently, I have not spent a significant amount of time in front a TV or computer screen. Similarly, I do get quite a bit of exercise, from walking nearly every day to working with horses every day of the week.With that in mind, it does not make much sense for me to be worried. Still, I've been noticing how some things.

To start, after I've been watching videos on Youtube or typing for a few hours, and I look up, my vision is blurry. My head spins, and I feel disoriented. It's not just the classic "Where am I?" when you've waken up from a long, deep nap or passed out after a night of partying; it's genuine confusion. A few times, my heartbeat has sped up significantly and anxiety has speared through me because I truly could not recall why I was where I was or what I was supposed to go do.

The second thing I have noticed is that my back, neck, and shoulders ache after a while. I'm not even legal yet to drink yet and I'm having pain like someone twice my age! My doctor said that sitting for long periods of time are not the cause; the cause is probably falling off horses for years. Even so, sitting for long periods, whether it be before of after I exercise, does not help. Not to mention that when the homework piles on and I have to be in front of a screen for lengthy bits of time, I want to snack and eat food that would make my doctor cringe.

So my tecknofears, as we called them in class, are not that many, and not very serious. All the same, they are still there, and, technically, I'm afraid they might get worse.

Overwhelming Truth

    While I'm not sure where I stand on the overall discussion of post-literacy brought about by Michael Ridley, the creator and editor of Beyond Literacy: Exploring a Post-Literacy Future, I certainly agree with chapt. 6 of his book (http://www.beyondliteracy.com/information-overload/).

    Ridley wrote of how overwhelmed we are with all the information coming at us through the internet. From the beginning, he wrote, at the inception of the internet's use to the general public, some experts were worried about all the information. This is similar to how Socrates warns Phraedus in Plato's Phaedrus that writing will be the downfall of civilization, that it "will only make human memory weaker" (3), according to Dennis Baron, author of A Better Pencil. While Socrates' worry was not the same format as expressed in Ridley's chapter, they both express concern of how a new technology will affect society. The concern in both cases seems to be how this new technology may give too much information to the general populace, which society is not prepared for.

    Since most Americans know how to read and write fairly well, Ridley's concern is that we have too much information going into our brains to the point our brains can no longer process the information. Our minds become rusty old cars that can get you from A to B, but can't go above sixty on the interstate or brake quickly.

    Unlike even a hundred years ago, we are constantly on the internet or with our faces in front of a screen. My niece is not even two years old, and she knows that there are cool things on her dad's phone and grandma's iPad. Her level of interconnectedness is nothing compared to mine--for now. There is little doubt that the next couple of generations will be the most technology literate the world has ever seen. My generation has taken the award for effective multitasking (though there is debate over this, too), but the high school students and grade schoolers and those even younger will have even more to look at and process than I ever did as a kid. I have a phone, laptop, and iPod. And even though I am one of the few millenials who still lacks a smartphone, I spend at least seven hours on my computer a day--and I never have only one tab open. I have several tabs on Internet Explorer, one of which is playing music, along with a Word document or two. In addition, I may have social media open, too. Then I have my phone on and iPod next to me, in case I want to upload a new song while I'm tweeting and writing a paper.

    Sounds fun, right? Wrong. Well, it is fun, but it takes me forever to get one thing done. Even if I just have music on, I have to pick a special playlist for this assignment. All is well until a song comes on a don't fell like listening to at that moment. Instead of merely muting it for a couple of minutes, I have to change it. If I don't, I sit there and brood on how much I do not like this song and why on earth did I ever save it on Spotify?

    I used to have a decent amount of discipline on getting one assignment finished before I posted something on Facebook , but I've lost it since entering college. I'm sure I could regain control, but it's so hard. It's difficult enough to the point that I'm willing to ignore it and only write a couple of paragraphs an hour in between surfing Pinterest.

    But Ridley's article had forced me to face the overwhelming (and irritating) truth: my memory is shot. I can't remember anything. I cannot tell you exactly what I read last week, much less during the summer, even though I know I enjoyed the book. There is no way I could ever recall all the websites I had been on in the past week. Oh, give me a couple of minutes and I may be able to, but ask me to describe what I read? My response is going to be red cheeks and a lot of head scratching.

    In reality, though, do I truly care? Despite knowing I can get more accomplished by closing social media and turning on quiet instrumental music, I will still have Pinterest or Facebook open while reading. If I don't discipline myself, I'll end up spending two or three hours longer finishing homework because I can't remember what I just read or thought. I'll continue to be frustrated and anxious.

    I cannot do anything about how much information is already on the internet, but I can control what I encounter. This does not mean I will delete any of my social media accounts, quite the contrary, but I can turn my laptop off when I read, or disconnect the internet while I'm writing. It will be difficult, no doubt, but maybe that important article I have to read for class will actually make sense in the classroom the next day. Maybe I'll remember what I wrote on my blog the other day that got people to read it.

    Bibliography: Baron, Dennis E. "Writing It Down." A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. N. pag. Print.

Michael Ridley, http://www.beyondliteracy.com/information-overload/