Snowing Leopards and Reading a …book?
I read a lot. Most of it appears on my computer screen: web pages, pdfs, reports, and email. And, of course, the occasional Facebook status updates. Everything in digital form, for the most part. When a new printed catalog comes in the mail, I go to my computer to “really see” the wares. I am a digital junky. So today’s pleasant surprise was reading a book while upgrading my computer to Snow Leopard. Such a beautiful irony for a sunny gorgeous day: I get to stop answering email and sit in a chair with a book while my trusty MacBook Pro says ” 45 minutes remaining” then “37 minutes remaining” then “Install four updates” then “restart,” etc.
I stalled on doing the upgrade because I knew it would take me out of communication for at least 3 hours while my computer gnawed through a lengthy to-do list. Embarrassingly, it took me about 6 months to “get around to it.” While the laptop churned, I read half of a new book on Security vs Access in schools, all about the challenges of balancing real “threats” of the Internet with open opportunities for student learning. Thus, another layer of irony: while my digital life was in limbo, I was reading about protecting and promoting the digital lives of kids – via the oldest known fixed form of mass communication: the printed page. Do you ever stop and think about such ironies?
Watching a television commercial about streaming Netflix?
Reading a sugary cereal box about healthy eating?
Running inside to catch the weather forecast on TV– on a beautiful, sunny day?
Telling your computer what you are doing instead of just DOING it?
Enough for today. It has stopped snowing leopards, and I am going outside to play 
I think there is a fringe benefit to all this. At some levels, I think mass (technological) communication invigorated not only interpersonal correspondence, but also reading and writing. Some people look at the “L33t” language and see a destruction of the written language. Some times, I see it as a renaissance of the written word. Imagine how many times some student just sits down and writes a satirical piece of prose about the modern times via facebook notes. Imagine how many people are able to communicate with long lost acquaintances via tweets. The difference between the original written/printed correspondence and the technological languages is that the level of privacy in our communication has changed, drastically. We are tasked with teaching our students how little of the internet is *actually* private. We are now wide open people where our entire selves are open to the public. On that note, I’m going to go google myself now.
Comment by RM3 — May 6, 2010 @ 4:19 pm