A terrible rasping, gurgling noise issued from Snape's throat. "Take... it... Take... it..." (DH657)
Yuehua Zhao
Prof. Robertson
English 61
03/21/2008
The Magic of the Internet
On February 7th, 1958, the U.S. started the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA, in hopes of maintaining technological superiority over the U.S.S.R., who in 1957 had just launched mankind’s first artificial satellite-the Sputnik-into space. (“ARPA/DARPA”) One of the first projects that ARPA funded was the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment system, or SAGE, which linked together radars from all over the country. If any one of these radars detected incoming enemy bombers or missiles, SAGE could relay the information to interceptors and ground-to-air defense systems, as well as alert the proper authorities. Even if one node in the SAGE network went down, the information can still reach its destination via another route. In matters of life and death, time was of the essence, and communication was key. (“MITRE History - Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE)”)
Radars were just the first step; the networking technology from the Cold War-era soon started an era of its own: the Information Age. ARPA created a network, known as ARPANET, that started to connect computers as well. By 1985 “there were ARPANET gateways to external networks across North America, Europe, and in Australia, and the Internet was global in scope.” (Stewart) At around the same time, the National Science Foundation created its own network that linked supercomputers from university campuses around the country.
In 1993, two computer programmers, Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina, created the first internet browser that could display both text and pictures in a single window, “Mosaic”, which eventually evolved into Mozilla, and finally Netscape-the first major commercial internet browser that made it all accessible to everyone (Quittner and Slatalla 51).
A shallow stone basin lay there, with odd carvings around the edge: runes and symbols that Harry did not recognize. The silvery light was coming from the basin’s contents, which were like nothing Harry had ever seen before. He could not tell whether the substance was liquid or gas. It was a bright, whitish silver, and it was moving ceaselessly; the surface of it became ruffled like water beneath wind, and then, like clouds, separated and swirled smoothly. It looked like light made liquid-or like wind made solid-Harry couldn’t make up his mind. (Rowling 583)
In 1995, my dad registered for a dial up account from the Beijing Telephone Agency. Yahoo was still listed under dictionaries as a mere interjection; Google was nonexistent; Microsoft Windows, a new gimmick at the time, was just starting to replace DOS, the keyboard-based Disk Operating System. My dad used the internet for nothing more than emailing colleagues in the United States. I have few recollections of my own of the clunky notebook computer he brought home from work, aside from once dropping the computer quite forcefully (and accidentally, as I maintain) on our hard tile floor.
In 1999, my family moved to the United States, where we bought our first personal computer. With a limited knowledge of English, I knew no more of the “world wide web” than the unfamiliar streets around our new house. As weeks and months passed by, I learned more both of English and of how the computer worked. In particular, I marveled at how the internet functioned: buttons, menus, texts, spanning across the screen, links that directed me from one page to another, and movies and games that reached for my imagination and tested my reflexes. One of my first website “favorites”, capncrunch.com, still exists today.
In 2000, I created an account with a service called AOL Instant Messenger and officially became an American teenager.
On January 1, 2001, mankind and the internet entered the 21st century.
The tip of his nose touched the strange substance into which he was staring.
Dumbledore’s office gave an almighty lurch-Harry was thrown forward and pitched inside the basin- But his head did not hit the stone bottom. He was falling through something icy-cold and black; it was like being sucked into a dark whirlpool- (Rowling 584-585)
Monday, April 26th, 2004
7:54p - Entry #1
I've never kept a journal before, and am not planning on wasting time to start now. Yup. Enjoy.
The reason I started writing a blog was not because all my friends were doing it already. Inevitably, fads do spread very easily on the internet: joining one was often as simple as a mouse click away. The fad I joined was merely that of making a blog, a web link that could join the countless other symbols and words adorning my instant messenger’s “profile” page.
I am not exactly sure when the language barrier of English finally faded away fully for me-it may be present still-though it was definitely one of the reasons I did not and could not enjoy writing, both at school and at home. Another major issue that I had with writing, regardless of language, was a much harder one to overcome, and it was that I often felt like there was nothing to write about. If there wasn’t a school assignment to complete the writing for, why bother? Time was fleeing too fast to allow any room for pauses-the opening of a book, the reaching for a pen, all tedious impediments that had to be overcome before any words can be written down. How could the medium offered by the internet be any different?
Rather than a journal, my blog had seemed more like a junkyard: any stray threads of my life, if by chance I was on the computer at the time, could end up on the World Wide Web-for better or for worse.
Thursday, December 23rd, 2004
4:31p - It's starting to look a lot like Christmas
Christmas break. Yay. Well, it's been about half a year since I recorded anything in here. I've started to get into chess, and have been going down my AIM buddy list trying to find someone to play with. IM me if you want to play! Hopefully my [dial-up internet] line'll stop dropping...
The term “blog” can refer to many things. Since they are easily (and, as a result, frequently) updated, blogs are suitable for a variety of purposes such as commentary, news, and of course, journaling. As the engines behind the blogs are really just collections of programming codes, it is the users who make the real contents. Sites that host blogs are like manufacturers that produce paper; an empty blog contains no more thought than a stack of blank sheets of paper.
However, blogs also differ greatly from paper. Blogs are much more flexible, as they are not limited by physics. One can attach anything to a blog: pictures, songs, videos, links to other pages, and more. The two dimensions of paper pose a limit on expression that has been present for centuries: no matter how creative the presentation of a text, the writer has only a fixed length and width to write in. A blogger, on the other hand, has no limits and no requirements: a page can be designed to look aesthetically appealing with five lines or five thousand lines of words. Some bloggers may choose the even more personal method of communication and record his voice as well as his thoughts into an audio “podcast”. Often, it is difficult to convey an exact thought or stance on paper. This is especially true for complex or difficult feelings that need many additional words and pages to express. The amorphous web, however, provides the extra dimension (or dimensions) needed to accomplish just that. This shift in trend of expression is pointing the way at a much greater movement, the expression of one’s entire personality.
Non Sequitur, http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/ Taken 08 Mar 2008
“This? It is called a Pensieve,” said Dumbledore. “I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.”
“At these times,” said Dumbledore, indicating the stone basin, “I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.”(Rowling 597)
For me, the biggest advantage of blogging instead of writing was accessibility. I never had to hunt down a journal and a pencil, as a computer connected to the internet was all I needed. Typing on the computer was also a faster process than writing for me, especially during editing, which would be quite slow by pencil and extremely messy by pen.
Consequently, updating my blog quickly became a habit. Nothing dictated whether or not a day was significant enough to write about; if I had just minutes to spare, it would be enough to write. Often, even when I planned on writing just a little, I ended up going on long tangents. Naturally, as my friends were also updating their blogs, I felt more comfortable writing my own.
Friday, April 14th, 2006
12:01a - Schizo
I need to talk to myself. Well, maybe not in the schizophrenic sense, I'm talking about talking to a self from when I was younger, happier, cooler. Say, when I was in 9th grade.
I was young, I was happy, and I was cool. I didn't have a single care in the world.
To give up being young and happy and cool to be so much more culpable, so much more worrisome, so much more temperamental. Has it been worth it?!
You tell me. Self, self, wherever did I go?
As my blog posts accumulated in volume, I also discovered the surprising yet delightful personal introspection aspect of journaling, which provokes thought from not just present but also future rereading. This was especially evident when my family moved from Upstate New York to Iowa during my junior year, a very painful process for me at the time.
Friday, December 1st, 2006
6:18p - 6/20/99 - 12/01/06
Chicago got blizzarded, so here I am on my detour in Atlanta, Georgia, waiting for some flight that got delayed an hour.
My memory plays tricks on me. It sometimes feels like I skipped out doing so many things I wanted to do so much. But then I think really hard and I can remember that it really hasn't been that bad, these last few weeks. They definitely would have been a lot more meaningless without everyone I've spent time with.
I think it's pointless to talk about the past. It has been great, but if I dwell on it more I'll just feel mega bad again. Like when I saw a flight to Rochester that left 5pm-ish and gave a serious consideration for getting on it.
The future freaks me out, but that's what should make it fun. I'll make sure that plans to visit Geneva will be part of it.
Missing all of youse,
Fred
If I didn’t write this blog down at the time of the move, I certainly would have felt much worse in the days and weeks that followed, when I would fall into relapses of longing for my old hometown and friends. It is in this post that I noted the positive sides of my life that came from the move, a note I often reread in those later, darker days. A regular journal may have just as effectively saved this rare moment of optimism in a bleak time of my life, but a blog was definitely the only way I could have spread it immediately to my friends back in New York, and receive support back from them just as quickly. While writing letters to each of my friends may have accomplished a similar goal, it could not have matched the speed of fiber optics. Most importantly, the internet also became an extremely reliable archive that was immune to being lost in all the moves my family went through over the years.
Dumbledore drew his wand out of the inside of his robes and placed the tip into his own silvery hair, near his temple. When he took the wand away, hair seemed to be clinging to it-but then Harry saw that it was in fact a glistening strand of the same strange silvery-white substance that filled the Pensieve. Dumbledore added this fresh thought to the basin, and Harry, astonished, saw his own face swimming around the surface of the bowl. Dumbledore placed his long hands on either side of the Pensieve and swirled it, rather as a gold prospector would pan for fragments of gold. (Rowling 597-598)
“We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.”
- Professor Robert Wilensky, U.C. Berkeley, 1996
If repetition is the mother of learning, the internet may be a very unrestricting-though liberating-father. From my first blog entry in April of 2004 to the last one in December of 2007, 478 pieces total, there are certainly some of more worth reading than others. Of course, whenever I go through them myself, I can enjoy almost every one of them from sheer nostalgia.
Almost every day of my life from May 2005 to November 2006 had been systematically recorded from the point of view most biased and most fair at the same time-my own. In a way, my blog offers me something that nobody else can ever understand; as my own experiences of my past are unique, so too is the recollection that comes from reviewing my own blog entries. This is not to say that it is useless to others: my blog offers the world what my writings on paper often could not-cannot-no matter how much improvement I may make as a writer. Among those 478 web pages are irritated rants, infatuated verses, and sleep deprived musings that I will never be able to bring about in paper and ink, be I too angry, cheesy, or tired.
Though I have stopped updating my blog for several months-as many bloggers often do when needs arise-I am now again tempted to return to the blogosphere, so that I may return to adding the bits of my ongoing life back into the treasury of my blog. Be the attraction in the process of refining, communicating, or preserving my thoughts, I know my blog will always have much to offer; as one of the blogging pioneers, Claudio Pinhanez, noted at the end of his blogging career, a blog “is, and will always be, under construction. Somewhat like life.” Could Pinhanez have imagined in his first online diary entry, in 1994, the modern impact of the proliferation of the blog? Could the architects working to create a defensive radar network for the Cold War imagine what evolution it would take decades later? They have been truly magical.
Thursday, April 27th, 2006
9:06p - A (very hypocritical) rant about words
In the future there will be no need for words
People will look back at
letters
emails
IMs
spoken conversations
and laugh at their futile attempts to convey thoughts
in tedious and inefficient ways
And all the books will have been burnt in 451 degrees Fahrenheit
because we've just grown too lazy to spend time
reading what others write
We've grown accustomed to asking questions
and expect immediate answers
not lengthy sentences that go on and on rambling with
no end in sight and syntax structure pushed to the limit to show
just a single, simple point
Because after all, thoughts are just impulses
not ink on paper---- right?
Me... I just pray that whoever will have perfected telepathy
will have known what they were doing
I hope not to undermine the importance of writing. After all, it is words that still make up the bulk of the blogs. Though “blog” is used as both a verb and noun, I still like to think of my action as writing instead of blogging. The omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent internet and all its extravagant enhancements are still, in the end, extensions to the original technology, language itself. That being said, I think I should take the advice of an English classmate and save this paper, and the wonders I’ve discovered while writing it-in my blog, of course.
“I think, Harry, it is time to return to my office,” said a quiet voice in Harry’s ear.
“Come,” said the Dumbledore on his left, and he put his hand under Harry’s elbow. Harry felt himself rising into the air; the dungeon dissolved around him; for a moment, all was blackness, and then he felt as though he had done a slow-motion somersault, suddenly landing flat on his feet, in what seemed like the dazzling light of Dumbledore’s office. The stone basin was shimmering in the cabinet in front of him…(Rowling 596-597)
Citations
“ARPA/DARPA.” Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. 14 Apr 2006. DARPA.
2 Mar 2008 .
"MITRE History - Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE)." MITRE.org.
25 Jan 2005. MITRE. 2 Mar 2008
Pinhanez, Claudio. “Open Diary - Claudio Pinhanez”. Claudio Pinhanez’s personal page.
10 Mar 1996. Claudio Pinhanez. 23 Mar 2008.
Quittner, Joshua, and Michelle Slatalla. Speeding the Net. 1st ed. New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998.
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 1st American ed. New York:
Scholastic Inc., 2000
Stewart, William. “Internet History, How the Internet was invented created.” LivingInternet.com. 2006. Living Internet. 2 Mar 2008
Prof. Robertson
English 61
03/21/2008
The Magic of the Internet
On February 7th, 1958, the U.S. started the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA, in hopes of maintaining technological superiority over the U.S.S.R., who in 1957 had just launched mankind’s first artificial satellite-the Sputnik-into space. (“ARPA/DARPA”) One of the first projects that ARPA funded was the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment system, or SAGE, which linked together radars from all over the country. If any one of these radars detected incoming enemy bombers or missiles, SAGE could relay the information to interceptors and ground-to-air defense systems, as well as alert the proper authorities. Even if one node in the SAGE network went down, the information can still reach its destination via another route. In matters of life and death, time was of the essence, and communication was key. (“MITRE History - Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE)”)
Radars were just the first step; the networking technology from the Cold War-era soon started an era of its own: the Information Age. ARPA created a network, known as ARPANET, that started to connect computers as well. By 1985 “there were ARPANET gateways to external networks across North America, Europe, and in Australia, and the Internet was global in scope.” (Stewart) At around the same time, the National Science Foundation created its own network that linked supercomputers from university campuses around the country.
In 1993, two computer programmers, Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina, created the first internet browser that could display both text and pictures in a single window, “Mosaic”, which eventually evolved into Mozilla, and finally Netscape-the first major commercial internet browser that made it all accessible to everyone (Quittner and Slatalla 51).
A shallow stone basin lay there, with odd carvings around the edge: runes and symbols that Harry did not recognize. The silvery light was coming from the basin’s contents, which were like nothing Harry had ever seen before. He could not tell whether the substance was liquid or gas. It was a bright, whitish silver, and it was moving ceaselessly; the surface of it became ruffled like water beneath wind, and then, like clouds, separated and swirled smoothly. It looked like light made liquid-or like wind made solid-Harry couldn’t make up his mind. (Rowling 583)
In 1995, my dad registered for a dial up account from the Beijing Telephone Agency. Yahoo was still listed under dictionaries as a mere interjection; Google was nonexistent; Microsoft Windows, a new gimmick at the time, was just starting to replace DOS, the keyboard-based Disk Operating System. My dad used the internet for nothing more than emailing colleagues in the United States. I have few recollections of my own of the clunky notebook computer he brought home from work, aside from once dropping the computer quite forcefully (and accidentally, as I maintain) on our hard tile floor.
In 1999, my family moved to the United States, where we bought our first personal computer. With a limited knowledge of English, I knew no more of the “world wide web” than the unfamiliar streets around our new house. As weeks and months passed by, I learned more both of English and of how the computer worked. In particular, I marveled at how the internet functioned: buttons, menus, texts, spanning across the screen, links that directed me from one page to another, and movies and games that reached for my imagination and tested my reflexes. One of my first website “favorites”, capncrunch.com, still exists today.
In 2000, I created an account with a service called AOL Instant Messenger and officially became an American teenager.
On January 1, 2001, mankind and the internet entered the 21st century.
The tip of his nose touched the strange substance into which he was staring.
Dumbledore’s office gave an almighty lurch-Harry was thrown forward and pitched inside the basin- But his head did not hit the stone bottom. He was falling through something icy-cold and black; it was like being sucked into a dark whirlpool- (Rowling 584-585)
Monday, April 26th, 2004
7:54p - Entry #1
I've never kept a journal before, and am not planning on wasting time to start now. Yup. Enjoy.
The reason I started writing a blog was not because all my friends were doing it already. Inevitably, fads do spread very easily on the internet: joining one was often as simple as a mouse click away. The fad I joined was merely that of making a blog, a web link that could join the countless other symbols and words adorning my instant messenger’s “profile” page.
I am not exactly sure when the language barrier of English finally faded away fully for me-it may be present still-though it was definitely one of the reasons I did not and could not enjoy writing, both at school and at home. Another major issue that I had with writing, regardless of language, was a much harder one to overcome, and it was that I often felt like there was nothing to write about. If there wasn’t a school assignment to complete the writing for, why bother? Time was fleeing too fast to allow any room for pauses-the opening of a book, the reaching for a pen, all tedious impediments that had to be overcome before any words can be written down. How could the medium offered by the internet be any different?
Rather than a journal, my blog had seemed more like a junkyard: any stray threads of my life, if by chance I was on the computer at the time, could end up on the World Wide Web-for better or for worse.
Thursday, December 23rd, 2004
4:31p - It's starting to look a lot like Christmas
Christmas break. Yay. Well, it's been about half a year since I recorded anything in here. I've started to get into chess, and have been going down my AIM buddy list trying to find someone to play with. IM me if you want to play! Hopefully my [dial-up internet] line'll stop dropping...
The term “blog” can refer to many things. Since they are easily (and, as a result, frequently) updated, blogs are suitable for a variety of purposes such as commentary, news, and of course, journaling. As the engines behind the blogs are really just collections of programming codes, it is the users who make the real contents. Sites that host blogs are like manufacturers that produce paper; an empty blog contains no more thought than a stack of blank sheets of paper.
However, blogs also differ greatly from paper. Blogs are much more flexible, as they are not limited by physics. One can attach anything to a blog: pictures, songs, videos, links to other pages, and more. The two dimensions of paper pose a limit on expression that has been present for centuries: no matter how creative the presentation of a text, the writer has only a fixed length and width to write in. A blogger, on the other hand, has no limits and no requirements: a page can be designed to look aesthetically appealing with five lines or five thousand lines of words. Some bloggers may choose the even more personal method of communication and record his voice as well as his thoughts into an audio “podcast”. Often, it is difficult to convey an exact thought or stance on paper. This is especially true for complex or difficult feelings that need many additional words and pages to express. The amorphous web, however, provides the extra dimension (or dimensions) needed to accomplish just that. This shift in trend of expression is pointing the way at a much greater movement, the expression of one’s entire personality.
Non Sequitur, http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/ Taken 08 Mar 2008
“This? It is called a Pensieve,” said Dumbledore. “I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.”
“At these times,” said Dumbledore, indicating the stone basin, “I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.”(Rowling 597)
For me, the biggest advantage of blogging instead of writing was accessibility. I never had to hunt down a journal and a pencil, as a computer connected to the internet was all I needed. Typing on the computer was also a faster process than writing for me, especially during editing, which would be quite slow by pencil and extremely messy by pen.
Consequently, updating my blog quickly became a habit. Nothing dictated whether or not a day was significant enough to write about; if I had just minutes to spare, it would be enough to write. Often, even when I planned on writing just a little, I ended up going on long tangents. Naturally, as my friends were also updating their blogs, I felt more comfortable writing my own.
Friday, April 14th, 2006
12:01a - Schizo
I need to talk to myself. Well, maybe not in the schizophrenic sense, I'm talking about talking to a self from when I was younger, happier, cooler. Say, when I was in 9th grade.
I was young, I was happy, and I was cool. I didn't have a single care in the world.
To give up being young and happy and cool to be so much more culpable, so much more worrisome, so much more temperamental. Has it been worth it?!
You tell me. Self, self, wherever did I go?
As my blog posts accumulated in volume, I also discovered the surprising yet delightful personal introspection aspect of journaling, which provokes thought from not just present but also future rereading. This was especially evident when my family moved from Upstate New York to Iowa during my junior year, a very painful process for me at the time.
Friday, December 1st, 2006
6:18p - 6/20/99 - 12/01/06
Chicago got blizzarded, so here I am on my detour in Atlanta, Georgia, waiting for some flight that got delayed an hour.
My memory plays tricks on me. It sometimes feels like I skipped out doing so many things I wanted to do so much. But then I think really hard and I can remember that it really hasn't been that bad, these last few weeks. They definitely would have been a lot more meaningless without everyone I've spent time with.
I think it's pointless to talk about the past. It has been great, but if I dwell on it more I'll just feel mega bad again. Like when I saw a flight to Rochester that left 5pm-ish and gave a serious consideration for getting on it.
The future freaks me out, but that's what should make it fun. I'll make sure that plans to visit Geneva will be part of it.
Missing all of youse,
Fred
If I didn’t write this blog down at the time of the move, I certainly would have felt much worse in the days and weeks that followed, when I would fall into relapses of longing for my old hometown and friends. It is in this post that I noted the positive sides of my life that came from the move, a note I often reread in those later, darker days. A regular journal may have just as effectively saved this rare moment of optimism in a bleak time of my life, but a blog was definitely the only way I could have spread it immediately to my friends back in New York, and receive support back from them just as quickly. While writing letters to each of my friends may have accomplished a similar goal, it could not have matched the speed of fiber optics. Most importantly, the internet also became an extremely reliable archive that was immune to being lost in all the moves my family went through over the years.
Dumbledore drew his wand out of the inside of his robes and placed the tip into his own silvery hair, near his temple. When he took the wand away, hair seemed to be clinging to it-but then Harry saw that it was in fact a glistening strand of the same strange silvery-white substance that filled the Pensieve. Dumbledore added this fresh thought to the basin, and Harry, astonished, saw his own face swimming around the surface of the bowl. Dumbledore placed his long hands on either side of the Pensieve and swirled it, rather as a gold prospector would pan for fragments of gold. (Rowling 597-598)
“We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.”
- Professor Robert Wilensky, U.C. Berkeley, 1996
If repetition is the mother of learning, the internet may be a very unrestricting-though liberating-father. From my first blog entry in April of 2004 to the last one in December of 2007, 478 pieces total, there are certainly some of more worth reading than others. Of course, whenever I go through them myself, I can enjoy almost every one of them from sheer nostalgia.
Almost every day of my life from May 2005 to November 2006 had been systematically recorded from the point of view most biased and most fair at the same time-my own. In a way, my blog offers me something that nobody else can ever understand; as my own experiences of my past are unique, so too is the recollection that comes from reviewing my own blog entries. This is not to say that it is useless to others: my blog offers the world what my writings on paper often could not-cannot-no matter how much improvement I may make as a writer. Among those 478 web pages are irritated rants, infatuated verses, and sleep deprived musings that I will never be able to bring about in paper and ink, be I too angry, cheesy, or tired.
Though I have stopped updating my blog for several months-as many bloggers often do when needs arise-I am now again tempted to return to the blogosphere, so that I may return to adding the bits of my ongoing life back into the treasury of my blog. Be the attraction in the process of refining, communicating, or preserving my thoughts, I know my blog will always have much to offer; as one of the blogging pioneers, Claudio Pinhanez, noted at the end of his blogging career, a blog “is, and will always be, under construction. Somewhat like life.” Could Pinhanez have imagined in his first online diary entry, in 1994, the modern impact of the proliferation of the blog? Could the architects working to create a defensive radar network for the Cold War imagine what evolution it would take decades later? They have been truly magical.
Thursday, April 27th, 2006
9:06p - A (very hypocritical) rant about words
In the future there will be no need for words
People will look back at
letters
emails
IMs
spoken conversations
and laugh at their futile attempts to convey thoughts
in tedious and inefficient ways
And all the books will have been burnt in 451 degrees Fahrenheit
because we've just grown too lazy to spend time
reading what others write
We've grown accustomed to asking questions
and expect immediate answers
not lengthy sentences that go on and on rambling with
no end in sight and syntax structure pushed to the limit to show
just a single, simple point
Because after all, thoughts are just impulses
not ink on paper---- right?
Me... I just pray that whoever will have perfected telepathy
will have known what they were doing
I hope not to undermine the importance of writing. After all, it is words that still make up the bulk of the blogs. Though “blog” is used as both a verb and noun, I still like to think of my action as writing instead of blogging. The omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent internet and all its extravagant enhancements are still, in the end, extensions to the original technology, language itself. That being said, I think I should take the advice of an English classmate and save this paper, and the wonders I’ve discovered while writing it-in my blog, of course.
“I think, Harry, it is time to return to my office,” said a quiet voice in Harry’s ear.
“Come,” said the Dumbledore on his left, and he put his hand under Harry’s elbow. Harry felt himself rising into the air; the dungeon dissolved around him; for a moment, all was blackness, and then he felt as though he had done a slow-motion somersault, suddenly landing flat on his feet, in what seemed like the dazzling light of Dumbledore’s office. The stone basin was shimmering in the cabinet in front of him…(Rowling 596-597)
Citations
“ARPA/DARPA.” Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. 14 Apr 2006. DARPA.
2 Mar 2008 .
"MITRE History - Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE)." MITRE.org.
25 Jan 2005. MITRE. 2 Mar 2008
Pinhanez, Claudio. “Open Diary - Claudio Pinhanez”. Claudio Pinhanez’s personal page.
10 Mar 1996. Claudio Pinhanez. 23 Mar 2008.
Quittner, Joshua, and Michelle Slatalla. Speeding the Net. 1st ed. New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998.
Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 1st American ed. New York:
Scholastic Inc., 2000
Stewart, William. “Internet History, How the Internet was invented created.” LivingInternet.com. 2006. Living Internet. 2 Mar 2008