“Links”
In “Links”, I was pleased to read about slang and how these terms squeeze into our vernacular. It was funny because at dinner last night, I was eating and talking with Liz’s dad about Ebonics. The term is understood as its own dialect and people know exactly how this dialect sounds and the slang used in Ebonics. It even shows up as a properly spelled word on Microsoft Word.
Even though slang was created because it seems easier to say or it makes more literal sense, slang can be quite confusing, as we have learned from this excerpt. It seems to be that some slang words can be used in different ways, meaning very different things. The word “surfing” was used as one of these examples, but I believe that “surfing” simply means “browsing” whether it be surfing the web or surfing channels. The media that one may be “surfing” is quite different, but the meaning remains the same. I am trying to think of a better example to come up with, but all that comes to mind at the moment is “shorty”. I believe that it could be spelled differently when this word is used to describe a cute girl, but I am not quite sure of the proper spelling.
Back to talking about links…. These links alter our organizational practices. No longer are we simply categorizing books or articles in a very flat manner, things are now in this web that can be accessed from many different routes. I suppose that is how one’s slang can travel to another group of people who are able to use the same word to convey a completely different meaning, or use a completely different word to describe the same idea.
“Twenty Minutes into the Future, or How Are We Moving Beyond the Book?”
In this excerpt, the reader learns about how society is moving beyond the age of books and how society might already be there in some aspects. I believe that there are numerous ways that we have passed this book age and we have moved on to that of the digital one. I might be mistaken with this, but I believe that there is such a thing as a “Smart Class” where everything is done electronically. Does this mean textbooks are on a laptop? I know that each student must have one in order to properly learn from the class. I also know that barely anybody goes to the library anymore to do research, unless the professor tells the class that they need so many BOOK sources for their research paper. I also know that when I start my research paper for Ecology, I will not be going to the library, but simply searching scientific journal articles from my desk in my room.
However, we have not completely left the age of book behind. This is obvious due to the fact that we still have circulating libraries full of books, students still have to purchase textbooks for their classes, and some people simply cannot read off of a computer screen.
“Into the Electronic Millennium”
I thought this piece was quite interesting. I believe we have talked about the notion that kids today cannot read or grammatically write as well due to the fact that there are so many resources that can do that work for them. The youth of today is not used to writing letters to communicate. Now we have an electronic instant messaging system with its own rules of spelling and grammar. Also, nobody of this generation is used to writing out papers by hand and having to revise it themselves because now there are such things as spelling and grammar check. Also, I believe that our vocabulary has gone down because of electronic dictionaries and thesauruses. These resources are at our fingertips, so what is the point of memorizing anything? It only takes a second to look it up again.
“The New Dialogue”
I thought this piece had some interesting points about reading words versus listening to them. In the piece, it said that a listener can just let the words come to them without much of an effort, but readers have to do a little bit more work and have to make the words move for them. It made me think about study habits and how reading something yourself makes it easier for the information to sink in better than listening to it. However, reading the information after listening to it first reminds the reader of what he/she heard before. Because reading takes more effort, I suppose that is the reason why one remembers it better. Just like if you write something down (not typing!!!!), you will remember it better than reading it. In writing, not only do you have to think of the information or read it from somewhere, you have to make the physical effort to put a pen to paper.
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