Regular Writing Has Been Digitalized To The Core
As a 90s kid I still have a clear picture of how computers invaded and changed our lives. I was in middle school when the changes took actions. The moment when all the teachers started asking us to type papers instead of writing them with a pen was the beginning of digital era for me. I remember how some of our teachers were outraged by these new tendencies: they believed that by typing the words instead of writing them we do half the work, and to be honest this frustration didn't make any sense to me. But it does now It wasn't a sudden fall Back in the middle school the process of using a computer to write papers didn't actually affect my grades: the only type of cheating available to me was using Microsoft Word's spelling checker to eliminate possible mistakes. But to be honest, XP's Word was not always right and could not be trusted 100% of the time. But the amount of mistakes in my essays was notably smaller, so I kept that going for me, which is nice. New Opportunities As I grew a bit older and went to high school, I learned that the opportunities are actually limitless, I could: Improve text's readability (Hemingway Editor) Check punctuation and grammar on another level (Grammarly) Download already written papers (before schools started using anti-plagiarism software) Even pay somebody to write for me (but unfortunately I didn't know how to determine a fraudulent essay writing service so I kind of flushed hundreds of dollars down the toilet, and I deserved it) Use essay generators to make up a paper (the result was never even remotely good, but still) All of those possibilities kind of spoiled my understanding of importance of actually learning how to write. Why should I worry about all of the rules if the machine can do all the thinking for me? Sadly I was not the only one affected by this idea. All of my classmates were thinking the same, so it didn't even make sense to me to have other opinion. We don't write like we used to It wasn't until recently that I realized how it is actually important to learn some analog writing. Don't get me wrong, technology is sometimes blissful and really does help the entire world with more than just getting a quick laugh from a cat meme. However, as our society is an inherently lazy place, we become too complacent and expect technology to solve all of our problems. This type of mentality is not only dangerous, but it shows how much more as a society we have to learn. The fact that with a click of a few buttons, anything and everything we need appears on our screen. Though sometimes simplicity is beautiful, it has its dangerous side effects. Slowly but surely, we as a society will learn that.
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