Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Insperspiration

When I start an entry with "back in my day..." it saddens me. It saddens me because this tells me that my life now is becoming more filled with things that I could not get back and less of things that I can have. No, it's not a selfish thing - the "things" that I speak of are a mixture of experiences, mistakes, triumphs and moments. 

During my time in university, there were still businesses around the campus that offered "typing services". You know, those places where you would bring your "neat" hand written drafts of your paper and have a professional typist encode everything using a commercial grade typing computer or machine. 

It was the time when chat rooms were found in the world of MIRC. It's a chat module, similar to a DOS based program. There were codes that you need to remember for different commands. Most of the emoticons, the shortcuts and the abbreviations that are prevalent in today's modern world i.e. texting and instant messages started in the chat world. Chatting on MIRC was an underground thing, not really mainstream. People actually still called each other up, sat next to each other and really had full on conversations. We also had photo albums of our childhood. Do you? 

I would like to believe that prior to this Google era, prior to this world when things are just a click away that creativity was more pure, that new things were actually made. Nowadays "creativity" is relegated to those who look the part. The 20 somethings who wear plaid, an urban outfitters hat, sport funky glasses and carry with them film cameras. No no, these kids are not creative. Their just - digital hipsters, plain and simple. 

A friend of mine has been posting her rants about how her students are blatantly cutting and pasting paragraphs upon paragraphs of written materials from the internet directly on to their submitted academically required paper. 

Here's the thing kids. Our generation formed the internet. Before you can even say instant message, we have already made out with and devirginized the internet. This was after we've submitted papers to our teachers after having used typewriters, or were printed using a dot matrix printer. And cutting and pasting? Well, that meant we literally cut and pasted parts of pages from magazines, newspapers and other widely used published materials. This is coming from someone born in the 80's, can you imagine the world for those born before me? Awesome for us, hieroglyphics for you. 

Most of us and everyone prior to me, sat down and actually had time to think. We created shit. We experimented, destroyed, took apart and put back together things. We know how the world was when it can be quiet in the afternoon. We knew what it felt like to play outside all sweaty and grimy and actually collected scrapes and bruises. Our eyelids did not twitch because our iphones have not made a sound in an hour - unlike you.

Since we actually typed our own papers, we had the time to at least paraphrase what we read off of Mr. Britannica's pages. 

Here's the gist young-ans - work for it. Life get's harder. It does every year. The only way to get ahead is to be better at it. The only way to be better at it is to be smarter. The only  way to be smarter is to not do whatever it is you are doing now. Oh, and stop watching VH1 and MTV. That's one thing our generation looks back on and had categorized under "mistakes". 

You have been advised and warned. Peace out. 
















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