Writing in the Digital Age - how about learning in the digital age?
John August, screenwriter and director (Go, Big Fish, The Nines), has a very informative blog where he just posted the transcript to a speech he recently gave called "Writing in the Digital Age." Some choice quotes are below, but I recommend reading the whole thing.
"as more aspects of our lives are conducted online, how we present ourselves in writing will only get more important."
"The internet has billions of readers. What it needs are writers who write with authority."
"No matter what career you end up choosing, or what career is chosen for you by fate, you will be a writer for the rest of your life. As the digital age accelerates, I’m convinced that writing is going to get more important each year. It’s not a noun anymore. It’s not the term papers and the memos and the screenplays. Writing is a verb. It’s an action. It’s a crucial way in which we process the world around us."
Reading this brought to the forefront of my mind thoughts I've been having recently about the state of learning/information/knowledge in "the digital age." The boy I tutor has an iPhone and a laptop, which means that he's able to connect to the internet virtually anywhere and at anytime. That means he carries the entirety of wikipedia and infinite google search results in his pocket. If he carries all that information there, what does he need to carry in his head?
I don't have some climactic revelation to all of this, but I do think it's fundamentally changing something about the purpose of learning, or at least what is fundamentally important to learn. On another angle, if the space in our brains that we spent on memorizing facts can be used for something else, (since the iPhone/internet can be used as a repository for facts) what can we do with this newfound brainspace?
"as more aspects of our lives are conducted online, how we present ourselves in writing will only get more important."
"The internet has billions of readers. What it needs are writers who write with authority."
"No matter what career you end up choosing, or what career is chosen for you by fate, you will be a writer for the rest of your life. As the digital age accelerates, I’m convinced that writing is going to get more important each year. It’s not a noun anymore. It’s not the term papers and the memos and the screenplays. Writing is a verb. It’s an action. It’s a crucial way in which we process the world around us."
Reading this brought to the forefront of my mind thoughts I've been having recently about the state of learning/information/knowledge in "the digital age." The boy I tutor has an iPhone and a laptop, which means that he's able to connect to the internet virtually anywhere and at anytime. That means he carries the entirety of wikipedia and infinite google search results in his pocket. If he carries all that information there, what does he need to carry in his head?
I don't have some climactic revelation to all of this, but I do think it's fundamentally changing something about the purpose of learning, or at least what is fundamentally important to learn. On another angle, if the space in our brains that we spent on memorizing facts can be used for something else, (since the iPhone/internet can be used as a repository for facts) what can we do with this newfound brainspace?