Yeah, online textbooks. This year I don't have as many online as I did last year, but last year I basically didn't even need a backpack because I was able to just access it all from my computer.
Anyways, I log on and I open up some music, usually some obscure hipster indie bullshit playlist from 8tracks.com, I check facebook, and I check my youtube subscriptions. And all of these things are so convenient just sitting inside my laptop's brain waiting to be seen by me that I really don't even get back to the thought of homework until I've already been on my laptop for an hour. Having all of these things so accessible is awesome, but them being this accessible and being in the same place sucks because it's so easy to be distracted from my original task. I can't get through homework without wondering what's going on on facebook or wanting to listen to Bowl of Oranges by Bright Eyes just one more time.
I understand why no one wants to read anymore. A lot of us teenagers are too busy being bombarded by other information than to be reading an actual real book. Facebook is nothing if not just information and though it's actually very boring information that will never matter, we all care about it together. Spending an hour on the internet can get you a lot more information than can an hour of reading a book, or so it may seem. The ratio of information payoff vs. time consumed of a book is way different than the information payoff vs. time consumed googling the plot and characters. But who even bothers to read the sparknotes anymore because if you don't give enough shit to read the actual book then why even read the sparknotes. Who cares.
So yeah there's the whole time consuming aspect of reading a book, which is too bad considering that if I took all the time I put into facebook and picked up a book instead, I would have it finished within the week. Maybe I'll do that. And a book would be more worth my time anyways.
And although I do actually spend time reading newspapers because over the summer I found out how sad ignorance can be, I pretty much only read online newspapers, partly because I like newspapers from England better than ones from America, but also partly because it's much more efficient because theres no cumbersome huge evil pages to flip through. (Why do newspaper pages have to be so big. Why can't they just make magazines every day on newspaper paper without staples but with a table of contents. Such a better idea than normal newspapers, why hasn't anyone contacted me about my brilliance yet.)
But the thing about written works being online that scares me the most is the ability to lie about what one wrote. It's so easy to delete a source and pretend like it just never happened in the first place when it's on the internet, and that's a lot more simple than book burnings for sure. It's kind of what happened in 1984, with the government choosing which information we are privy to. Though I am not accusing the government of doing this, it is other people choosing which information we are privy to, and anyone can publish to the internet and say what they're saying is true.
This whole argument is weirdish because anyone can print their words and say they're true too, but there's a lot more respect about what you write and sell in bookstores than there is on the internet.
NOTHING MAKES SENSE.
I wish I knew how to pick a side and be vehement for it EVER because I actually just sit in my room a lot and argue with myself.
Right, reason #87 why I should ask for some medication for Christmas.
But let's just take a moment real quick and observe the syntax of my writing. I never indent, and I don't really know why I hate how indentations look, I just do.
No comments:
Post a Comment