Digital Books

With the idea of every physical book going online, it can be a scary concept for many people. Remember when there were those random people that would refuse to buy DVDs because they thought that the original VHS version of movies were better, and that DVDs should just go away? I feel like this situation is very similar.

I feel like no matter what your opinion is about books becoming digitized, it is going to happen whether you like it or not. You may sit there and complain and whine and buy as many physical books as you want, but eventually, most likely, all text is going to be digitalized and distributed to the masses in the blink of an eye.

It does, however, take some of the mystery and fun out of things. Imagine a world where the latest Harry Potter book was about to be downloaded at midnight when it was released. Everyone would be at home, in front of their computers, waiting for the download to start that evening instead of lining up outside a Barnes and Nobles’, dressed as their favorite character. In this way, I would have to say that digitalized text definitely takes away the ritual and fun of things.

You may be able to take a tablet everywhere and read as many books as you want, but you don’t get the memories from the pages, like getting caught in the rain with the book, and all the pages of a section are warped and turn in a funny way. If that happened to your tablet... well, you’d probably have a dead tablet.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is very interesting, if nothing else. I enjoyed reading this article because I feel as though so many English classes sort of just ignore Wikipedia’s existence and just say “Don’t use it for this paper, okay?”, and that’s just the end of the discussion. Nothing more. Nothing less. However, I think that there should be a dialogue about it, especially in middle and high school. I feel that this article shows that yes, Wikipedia can be accurate, but it is not suitable for research papers or any sort of documented work because it can be edited by those who have not gone through the editing and approval process of being published. I feel that many, many teachers in those lower grades do not explain this to their students.

I think the article was a very interesting read. I am an avid user of Wikipedia for my personal life, and I feel as though it does help me learn a lot of things. If I’m listening to a band, and I particularly like their song, I’ll use Wikipedia to go find their page to see what album the song comes from so that I can go listen to the entire album. As music is basically like therapy for me, I find this to be quite a help. When a band doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, I’m almost lost.

But, besides musical tastes, I’ve used Wikipedia for many other things such as hearing some sort of event on the news occurring in another part of the world, and I’m curious what it is all about, so I “wikipedia” (notice how the site has also been converted into a verb amongst modern internet users) that country to discover what is really going on. I don’t think Wikipedia is all that bad, but I feel as though it still has a lot of growing to do before teachers and professors will trust it, if they ever will. 

Acts 3 and 4

So, in the end of Pygmalion, Eliza finally brings herself to the forefront as a human being and she has definitely had enough of Higgins and Pickering trying to tell her what to do and whatnot. I’m a bit disappointed by this. Of course, it’s great for the character that she developed enough to finally stand up for herself and show those two men what she’s really made of... but I think I liked her better when she was just this annoying character that kept making absolutely no sense to anyone. Not that that mattered because Higgins and Pickering basically just ignored her existence anyways.

I think I found the whole situation amusing. Eliza is trying to express ideas that she has, but no one seems to care. This concept seems to still be a bit true that no one cares about her except for Higgins. When she finally expresses her opinion of everything via slipper to a face, Higgins starts to show interest in her. But, honestly, how is she any different from before except now they’re actually sort of paying attention to her? She always made a giant exclamation with nonsense syllables like “aw-oh-oh-oh-oh” or whatever, but now that it has gone physical, they finally pay attention? What kind of turn around is that?! 

I just found the ending to be a bit of a disappoint. It sounds weird, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if they just didn’t care about her still in the end. Would’ve been quite humorous for me.