Growing up Digital: Younger Generations

            Growing up Digital by Don Tapscott, he has compiled some very useful information about today’s youth and what great contributions the younger generation will bring to the future and what they will mean to the future of the economy and society. If today’s world is having a dramatically change and has a great contribution of how it’s shaping our everyday life. This means that the younger generations are starting to embrace a different set of values than their parents did then changing the way society interacts with one another. For example, a younger group of people would be a lot more worried if they had forgotten their phone or computers charger at home because then if the device dies there is no way to stay connected with others, having these electronics always at our positions and ready to be used is one of younger generations most important value. As for older generations like our parents that is one of a less worry to them. They are more interested in not leaving more important behind than their cell phone or even the charger. As generations continue getting younger the values continue on going down. Another great example is when trying to hold a face to face conversation with a younger kid that’s the age between two and twenty two. They will be more concentrated on what’s going on in their phone screen rather than being physically engaged in the conversation she or he is having with either a friend or a family member. These N-Genres use a bit of technologies for many different things, computers for entertainment, business, learning, communicating, shopping and many more things but it is also devaluing certain things such as values start to significantly decrease as technologies are taking over the world; it is much harder to hold the attention of someone whose values are more important in his or her technological devises. Not only are these technologies taking value and importance from a person’s life it is also impacting the economy because companies must keep pace with the technological revolution or things might start going south real quick. If companies want to compete in the new millennium they are urged to throw off the past and embrace the upcoming generations and its new ideas. Instead of having a misconception about kids today these are thrown away in favor of the realities and information about this generation. 

A Better Pencil: by Dennis Baron, Erik Lemus

         Times have quickly been shifting and the tools and technologies that have been used for centuries are now becoming for advanced in the terms that there is much more that use for such technologies. For example, for those people who like to idealize the good old days where everything had to be written by hand either using a pen or pencil. These are the days when writing a paper for a class was literally a mission to get done. If using a technology such as a pen there was no room for mistakes. If there was a mistake or misspelled word there was only two options to choose from either you started all over or having whiteout was very use full. Even with the use of whiteout makes the paper look less clean and professional with such marking still visible in the paper. One of the other option was with a pencil, but most of the times writing with a pencil was just for draft and not used as a final. But when pencil was being used there was the option to erase some mistakes the paper might have. The good old days when texting, emails, social network or really any other website online was still not on full access to everyone. There was no bombardment of spams such as texts, emails, and social network notifications.  

            One of the things that Baron does successfully in this text is taking this idealization and very clearly and usefully analyses this idea and places it into historical context. Baron records the development of the word technologies in a content that is broken down better and gives a much more in-depth understanding from the beginning of writing. Barons purpose is not necessarily to judge reactions to how writing technologies has shifted and made the world shift quite quickly in the matter of few years.  Instead he places them in context, he successfully shows the readers the doubt and fear of new technologies such as Facebook and twitter have provoked the digital revolution to provided America with new others making our nation into a nation of writers.

            Baron also contains some very interesting information in this book about Thoreau, for many people Thoreau has come to represent the anti-technologies idea. But instead Baron quite interesting tells a story about this man. He explains how Thoreau, someone who would sit in the forest alone to write in his journal latterly created a “better pencil” he was hired to work for his father attempting to improve the pencil. Baron also brings a great point, why was the pencil made? Well back in the day in order to write a letter or note to someone you had to have some tools available for you such as ink, feather, and some goat skin sheet for paper. Thoreau invention of one of the first laptops is a huge stretch for such claim Baron unpacks it, explaining how this made it available to use when on the go with no messy ink or feathers. 

Group Presentation: Here Comes Everybody

     Today being the first day for our book panel review for class and there were two different groups presenting and each analyzing a different book. The first group up was assigned the book here comes everybody by Clay Shirk. This was something totally different than what we have been doing in class but making this a little different made the class more engaging.  Having a group analyzing the book gives you more of an opportunity to have more questions about the main point they picked up from this book and also arise some points that the group might be able to elaborate a little more on. The book here comes everybody is has some very interesting points, as mention in class by the first group that we are from a world where media is mainly to provide information evolving to a world where media has been drastically changing. 

As the internet is quickly changing and shaping the way we are interacting with one another change media to a cite where people are allowed to collaborate, share information and ultimately be able to work together I a collaborative way. This book is also showing how social media is different than podcasting media. Currently in the 21 century are at the stage where media is all around us and is being used for many attributes to help humans make their life easier all around. Know this brings a very important point, you know the saying about finding information online “don’t trust the internet” this is due to the fact of one of the theory’s this book arises. For example, it is very easy to share information on websites for example YouTube and nabster. There are also examples where people come together and build things together such as Wikipedia or Lenox, but this doesn’t always mean that the information given by other users is correct. One of the things this group also mentions is that this will give the ability for people to take action in the world sometimes this is politically actions and sometimes it could be economical actions taking action as a group no just individuals. But my question is, is media really used for such things or is this switching as media evolves. 

Things Fall Apart: Government Laws

   In chapter 23 there are some very interesting evens happening that bring up a very worldwide discussion that is still happening today with politics and the laws that some governments have. In this chapter it is more than obvious that the tragedy that Okonkwo and his six other leaders from the village had caused was done to bring back the norm and peace of the village. Okonkwo seemed to be very satisfied and pleased with what the sex leaders have accomplished. The destruction they caused to the church to them seemed as if it would bring some kind of peace, little did they know that this was only going to cause them more harm. As the chapter continues it is clear that this chapter describes the oppressive yet naive that the British took to ensure that all colonial justice were being served. This is a real concur that has evolved and is still happening today, for example, after all the destruction that has happened the District Commissioner says how he wants to hear both sides of the clan leaders story. He asked the leaders to come join him in and meet with him in his government office and twelve other men. The six leaders agreed to meet with him because he seemed as if he was wanting to fix this and get some sort of peace agreement reminding them that he and his government promote peace and want to help them be happy. There was still doubts in the six men, they weren’t trusting the District Commissioner so the six leaders took their machetes. As the Commissioner asked the leaders to explain their actions towards the church the leaders have had put their machetes down already. The twelve men surprised the leaders and hand cuffed the six leaders of the village.  This act is something similar to today’s society, if you go to court or any police station to explain your side of the story no matter if there is an actual good reasoning behind all of this there will still be no reasonable justice. Still going to get some kind of punishment or worse. As the six leaders get imprisoned the commissioner tells them that they will be treated well and set free only after paying some fines due to the destruction that they have caused.  This is nowhere near the truth, when the government tries throwing you in jail they will say that they will keep you safe and be set free after paying some fines. Okonkwo and his six other men were repeatedly mistreat the six leaders. They would shave their heads, go two days with no food or toilet services. This is much like prison in today’s world, the government lies to get you were they want.

Achebe: Enganging with the composition

Things fallen apart by Chinua Achebe, one of the most interesting novel that I have came across. This is a post-colonial novel that was written in 1958. As I started reading the novel I was quickly engaged in the way the novel distributed its information about each one of the characters. This was quite interesting to me only to engage myself into the reading. As I continued on reading the novel I soon noticed the way the content of the novel was written it would throw me of. Quickly asking myself why type of narration could this be? Figuring this out before continuing on reading could make it much easier for me to understand the narration. 

            Reaching half ways through chapter two I understood there was quite a bit going on in the book already, only have I read one and half chapters and lots of very important things have already happened in the novel. For example, in the first chapter we get introduced to Okonkwo, a young boy who was very well respected because of his victorious win against Amalinze, who was nicknamed “cat”, as stories say cat was given that name because his back has never touched earth. Okonkwo who defeated a seven year champion soon became very famous, talented, wealthy, successful as he owned his own farm of yams, was married to three wife’s with eight kids and supporting every single one of them in their own hut. As the narration continues in third person mainly focusing on Okonkwo and his successes though out his young life it also shows how Okonkwo struggles to be as different from his now dead father. He thinks he father to be weak, effeminate, lazy, embarrassing, and poor. He showed only how to be strong, masculine, industrious, respected, and wealthy. There is lots of skipping from characters to characters. This is done throughout the novel as it jumps from character to character to detail the thoughts and motives of various individuals that have a small but important part of the novel such as Okonkwo’s father and his motives influencing his son Okonkwo.

            The novel only continues to show Okonkwo struggles to keep from being like his dad, he then finds out that one of his sons is also lazy and beats him afraid that he will end up like his father Unoka.

Ong: Shifting from orality to development of script

As Ong continues on discussing and focusing mainly with primary orality in the first couple of chapters he quickly shifts over from discussing of primary orality to the development of scripts. Ong is taking into account some of the things that are not usually thought about or brought into consideration when studying or working with literacy in any sort of filed. For example, one of the most important effects that Ong discusses in chapter four is being able to understand a deeper meaning of pristine or primary orality he suggests that “pristine or primary orality enables us better to understand the new world of writing, what it truly is, and what functionally literate human beings really are” (Ong, 77). This might be the only way to help human beings better understand that writing does distance the originator of his or her thoughts from the receiver. This might be because writing does this by enabling the existence of dialog. When there is no dialog enabled there is also the absence of direct questioning or contested to the originator about his writing. This is really important in literature because the originator might be trying to convey an important message across to a certain type of audience and if the message is not clear to that audience there was no message really going across. As if there was actually primary orality there could be some questions about what the originator was trying to get across. There is a bigger chance of dialog, bouncing ideas of each other, and sharing further information.

Writing still has a much deeper understanding and meaning to our everyday lives that human beings go on with their day not fully being aware that without writing the mind would not be functioning the way it does, this is not only when engaged in writing but when its normally composing its thoughts in oral form (Ong, 77). Ong also explains how writing is evolving from more than just literacy, it is also becoming a way of expression. Humans are moving from an oral-aural-based sensory world to one where vision controls supreme. The transition of writing is giving us a sense of earlier culture effects and what humans think about it. With orality there is more spread of knowledge than with literacy because there is more of a dialog and chances to have an open discussion with the originator. This holds a structured way of thinking rather than having ideas floating around in your head with no actual meaning or structure.

Differences between Literature and Orality

This heavily dense book is a creation and collage of lots of different topics and ideas that mainly focus and represent the Literacy and orality in our times. There is a compact mixture of a wide range of work cited from different authors that compare and contrast their understanding of Literature and Orality. The Technologizing of the Word discuss how there is a difference between oral and Literacy, as mentioned in the first chapter father Ferdinand de Saussure of modern linguistics had called and payed close attention to the primacy of oral speech. This reinforces all verbal communication but Ferdinand thought of writing not as the transformer of verbalization but instead a complement to oral speech (Ong 5). Saussure linguistics had developed a very highly sophisticated study of phonemics, this is to show how language is incorporated in sound. Humans existed before writing was passed on through verbalized records. 

The earliest script only dates from 6,000 years ago but human have been in existence for a much greater time than that. Homo sapiens have been in existence for nearly 30,000 – 50,000 years. There are thousands and thousands of different types of writings and languages but there are only a few that are still around today and being used. Throughout the years of human existence and the tens of thousands of languages that have been spoken in the course of history there has been only 106 languages that have even been committed to writing to a degree appropriate enough to have been able to produce literature. Out of all the 3000 languages only 78 of the languages do have literature but there is no way to calculate how many languages have disappeared or been transmuted into different languages before writing came along (Ong, 7). With so many different languages some seem to also be forgotten, the only way to not have forgotten the different types of languages is by having them writing down. Soon evolution of orality and literacy came along making it possible to understand better both oral culture and subsequent writing culture. Print is the buildup of pristine culture and subsequent writing culture keeping in mind that literacy began with writing for example, this book is a good example of some type of print but also writing.

 As we introduced print and begin to start discussing more about, it is also important to keep in mind that the print culture brings writing into a new peak. This new type of orality called ‘secondary orality’ questioned our understanding of the differences between orality and literacy as the electronic age starts to rise. However how will the era of technology continue on shifting the way we interact, communicate with one another. If scholars continue on studying the differences of these three different types of field’s oral culture, subsequent writing culture and print chances are that print will continue shifting from orality to literacy on to electronic processing into different structures.