I've tried to avoid the computer revolution for a long time now, but it seems impossible. When I worked for a newspaper press we used to talk about how the internet may someday take over the newspaper industry, but we never gave it much credit because we figured that the time honored newspaper would be the last bastion of offset web and sheetfed printing. In modern day, four years later, the monster that the internet has become has a voracious appetite. It is going to consume us all and I admit that I have became an unfortunate casuality. I've finally given up writing papers with the pen and paper this semester.
The depth of this problem didn't truely dawn on me until I went to a talk on getting hired after college. Not all of it was geared toward computers, but there were certain points that proved we now live in a different age. From '94 up until '03 I was in the job market. The process was easy. You made an appointment and came with your resume to give to the person responsible for hiring you, or at least you mailed your resume in a nice envelope. Now it is recommended that you have your resume in a form that you can insert directly into the body of an email becasue employers don't want to take the time with your paper anymore. The internet has also become a usefull tool for placing a resume so employers can scan thousands of prospective applicants from the comfort of their office or even home computer. It kind of makes me feel inhuman sometimes when I think that the employer will never see or talk to me before he looks for me on the internet; more like a commodity than a person.
When asked about the future of writing, the faculty present both agreed that writing on the web will be the wave of the future. Web based writing as also apparently gotten rid of indentions for some unknown reason. It appears that the good old days of hard copy and MLA form may be falling to the wayside. What would Johannes Gutenberg say?
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4 comments:
Don't worry, the MLA is actively resisting any movement away from the typewriter days of yore; they still prefer underlining to italics.
I think the email resume thing is useful in some contexts, but I'm not sure I buy the argument that everyone is inevitably going in that direction.
I agree with what you said on the "mass proliferation" of computers and the internet. For example, I received a phone call the other day from my ex-father-in-law (that was weird enough). He wanted to know how to use e-mail and since I was in college, he assumed that I knew a bit about computers. This man is 60 years old and a firm supporter of resisting change, so I found this newfound excitement over e-mailing suprising to say the least. The more I thought about it, I realized that my two daughters know how to use computers more efficiently than many older people. A lot of their tests are taken on a computer -- and they are in 3rd and 4th grade. I wonder where this will all lead?
In response to Trisha's comment, don't you wonder and maybe WORRY where it will lead?
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