Blog Post 7

In today’s reading Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott there was a section where Tapscott talked about speed and how today’s generation is all about speed. Some examples he gives was with video games the player will receive instant feedback and how in a google search someone receives thousands of search results with mili-seconds of the search. It is due to this life style that Tapscott states that we assume everyone else will respond quickly back to us when messaging each other.

                Personally I would have to agree with Tapscott argument because my generation and I are all about the speed. For example when we are on the internet we want the fastest internet we can afford so that way we are almost always instantly connected to our friends or anyone. Also when it comes to new technology we want the fasted piece of technology that there is on the market; an example of this would be with computer. Computer hardware and drives are constantly improving by getting faster and smaller, before all computers had a hard drive which was the way the computer could pass information around, now the new type of drive is a Solid State Drive (SSD) in comparison with a normal hard drive the SSD is so much faster and it is the drive that most computers are starting to always come with. 

In this week’s reading of A Better Pencil by Denis Baron it talks about how when writing in text first began it wasn’t trusted by anyone. Writing could not be trusted because of how easily a random person could create a letter that is giving him a large amount of a rich persons land and without proof that the letter was a fake. So to prove that the letter is real signatures would be written on the letter or even a symbol that shows that it is the real person was introduced.

As time progressed signatures became an important part of writing a letter to show it authenticity. You can basically say that the signature or symbol at the end of the letter is the writer’s identity because if someone could perfectly copy the signature then they have access to pretty much anything the person owns. In today’s society any signature can be copied and pasted on any blank document, but its not always perfect because a signature created by a pen as compared to machine has more authenticity to it. 

            In this week’s reading it is mentioned that Plato believed that the creation of writing will cause forgetfulness for those that learn how to write. Plato believed this because due to writing people won’t exercise their memory and rely more on what is written down on paper to help them remember. Also in the reading it was mentioned that writing is not the same as having a face to face conversation due to the fact that anything can be said on paper and you wouldn’t be able to tell what emotion or facial expression they might have. So many things are taken in when talking to someone face to face but with writing one can never know if what they said is truth or a lie.

            That being said, writing is still a very important part in today’s culture and is also useful in helping people remember. Writing is one of the most important pieces of technology invented, without writing anything ever said would change from mouth to mouth creating different stories but the same plot.