(no subject)

So, I was lying in bed, pondering the terribly-written textbooks I'm reading, along with all of the reponses to ozarque's recent posting regarding the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", and I came to a sudden realization.

I got a lot of F's, that year I spent in college in the early 90's.

Back then, however, I pretty much mainlined any written material. From eyes to brain, no stopping. All through my teens I retained the ability to precisely recall where I first saw a word, and could pull the book down and point at the usage.

(Most of my vocabulary came contextually; I liked reading the dictionary but I don't think it altered my word usage much. And I rarely looked learned words up deliberately, which caused some problems. I had the wrong context for "erstwhile" till my 20's. ooops.)

Well, then— what caused the problem in college? I think it was a primitive defense system. Nowadays as I read, I note and keep in mind the obvious biases and incorrect facts. It makes reading tedious (especially poorly-written textbooks), but I can keep going with the understanding it is likely wrong. In my late teens, however, I had no such ability. As soon as I spotted a glaring error, I just stopped. In the case of CMSC112, a professor was deliberately teaching things the wrong way with the intent to "fix it later"... and even if you knew the correct way to program it, you were forbidden to use it until she "taught" it to us. I argued with her, lost, and stopped going altogether.

The problem was that at the time I knew I had no defense against wrong facts. Once I took them in, the damage would be done— I would have internalized them, and they might linger to cripple me later. People that have seen the romance part of my bookshelf might be inclined to quibble with me at this point; clearly I wasn't adverse to reading trash. Except that romances are *fiction*, and thus an escape from reality (and I did well in all of my literature and writing classes). Also, I would argue that while I did internalize romances, they weren't any more harmful to me than the relationship archetype presented to me by my mother, and at least held out the hope of a happy ending.

So, what did I do? I dropped out of college, and applied my sponge-like nature to the structure of the Internet. Now, 15 years later, I'm a more saturated sponge, and I've learned to install some basic firewalls on my brain. College— with its poorly-written texts and wrong facts— is no easier, but far less dangerous.

overheard; or, the young and the clueless

A guy and his law-school-nephew, awkwardly out to dinner. The conversation turns to, you know, the internet.

guy: I hear that now you can even access social networks from your cellphone.

boy: yeah.

guy: so, why would you even want to access a social network from a phone? Actually, what does one do with a social network, I am unclear on the concept. Is it like a "blog"?

boy: no... you keep in touch with friends. You update it, with like where you are and what you are doing.

guy: so, what would I read if I went to your social networking site?

boy: you could see what movies I like, or what I'm doing, or what my friends think of me, I guess. It's not a blog.

guy: So you are on the face-book site, yes? And any one can just see this?

boy: yeah, but I'd have to give you access to my page. I mean, it's not like it's just out there.

It becomes clear later in the conversation that while uncle is painfully clueless about the social networking thing, he has a much better grasp on privacy. Boy has 1) no expectation of privacy, and is actually happy that advertising can be targeted to him and 2) has no concept that information compiled about him would be packaged and be resold or might linger beyond his affiliation with a service. "I could just, like, delete my page. Why would anyone keep the information?"

Boy is going to make a wonderful lawyer, I can tell.