Spring Break
A writer's right to write
Furrah Qureshi
Issue date: 1/18/08 Section: Ed-Op
It was a Wednesday afternoon and I was sprawled in between two different uncomfortable chairs flipping channels until I stopped on Vh1 to watch America's Most Smartest Model. Two intellectually crippled male models ran on a treadmill for five minutes straight as I watched for five minutes straight. My friend walked in and asked what I was watching-and only then, did I feel shame. Then, I asked myself when and how I had become so inept. For that absurd five minutes of my life was I all right with watching trashy Vh1 shows?
The world is changing at a faster rate then it ever has before. We've swiftly made the switch from an industrial society to an informational one. News can tenderly be received at any moment on websites like CNN.com. Rampant opinions from all walks of life can be expressed in the blogosphere. Words like "blogosphere" no longer are underlined with red squiggles in Microsoft Word documents. Information is proliferating while print media is dying. Flashy images resonating from the television in HD quality are now even becoming a hassle when free streams of the same content plague the internet and are themselves plagued with advertisements and unblockable pop-ups.
Information is shoved into all of our minds at all points of the day. But was it just information that educated us? Wasn't it more about the process? And more so, the quality of the process? Contrary to my most sincere wishes, watching Law & Order SVU marathons on TV does not qualify me to be an attorney. Given this concept, news and information shouldn't be accumulated from just any C-Span gorging 30-something with a blog.
Looking up "The Treaty of Paris" on Wikipedia because it is too bothersome to ask your professor in class is a great marvel of the 2000s. I am happy to live in a time when we can do that. But writing your 12-page term paper, a biographical essay on Millard Fillmore based on the commercialized information solely accumulated from Google isn't right. When the information is dumbed down, does that mean we, the ones processing it, are too?
The world is changing at a faster rate then it ever has before. We've swiftly made the switch from an industrial society to an informational one. News can tenderly be received at any moment on websites like CNN.com. Rampant opinions from all walks of life can be expressed in the blogosphere. Words like "blogosphere" no longer are underlined with red squiggles in Microsoft Word documents. Information is proliferating while print media is dying. Flashy images resonating from the television in HD quality are now even becoming a hassle when free streams of the same content plague the internet and are themselves plagued with advertisements and unblockable pop-ups.
Information is shoved into all of our minds at all points of the day. But was it just information that educated us? Wasn't it more about the process? And more so, the quality of the process? Contrary to my most sincere wishes, watching Law & Order SVU marathons on TV does not qualify me to be an attorney. Given this concept, news and information shouldn't be accumulated from just any C-Span gorging 30-something with a blog.
Looking up "The Treaty of Paris" on Wikipedia because it is too bothersome to ask your professor in class is a great marvel of the 2000s. I am happy to live in a time when we can do that. But writing your 12-page term paper, a biographical essay on Millard Fillmore based on the commercialized information solely accumulated from Google isn't right. When the information is dumbed down, does that mean we, the ones processing it, are too?
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 3
M. Hoffman
posted 1/22/08 @ 2:58 PM EST
A well written article about writing. You and your shrewd social commentary. I really like all of your articles, the triangle doesn't usually see stuff like this. (Continued…)
Jamie
posted 1/23/08 @ 6:42 PM EST
Great article, and oh-so-true. I realized a month or two ago that I hadn't finished reading a novel since graduating high school 2 years ago...awfully depressing. (Continued…)
Admirer
posted 1/23/08 @ 10:15 PM EST
Girl, you can write.
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