Tag Archives: NY Times

An impressive work of plagiarism.

Leave a reply

I was somewhat impressed by Rowan’s act of plagiarism as described in Widdicombe’s article for the New Yorker, to create a book out of a multitude of different books is hard to even fathom.  One can even argue that were it not for his eidetic (photographic) memory writing a book in this fashion would have been way more difficult than creating an original work; you would have to take into account different tones, situations and then make them fit seamlessly into one story.  This was still an act of plagiarism but at the same it was still a work of art. I strongly believe like the article alluded to that if Rowan had initially come out before the book’s release and said that his book was created from a mash-up of different works there wouldn’t have been that much outrage.  At least Rowan admitted to his act of plagiarism unlike Senator John Walsh who flatly denied his act of plagiarism according to the New York Times article by Jonathan Martin.  Senator Walsh was accused of allegedly copying his thesis for the U.S. Army War College; after looking at the open interactive graphic in the New York Times article it’s pretty hard to deny that he did not plagiarize parts of his thesis.  Once you are caught plagiarizing the only thing you can do is fall on your pen and apologize there is no other recourse.

Power of information

Leave a reply

In both pieces authors discourse about advance of information. Badke gave us short perspective about how the idea of information evolution with human society and affect it at the same time. Rainolds, in his turn, bring to the table scientific research about how electronic information technology will have transformed American society in a next twenty years. In spite of authors moving with different motivations: Badke needed the basis for his modern information research method, and Rainolds just gave the readers interesting facts, they both make us clearly understand, that information is power, and as any power it has advantages and disadvantages. If Rainolds, actually, not doing much, in his article he just present wise look to the future, Badke describes situation where tail almost willing the dog. In his passages about credibility and quality of both- information and people who use it and care about it , Badke is drawing very sad picture: evil Google and web 2.0 people control the minds of majority and blocking from them real information. Moreover, I mention that Bodke is switching the idea of learning, which is , almost all the time , life  long process, with idea of research, which is, some times, can be done for one working day. Beside of this, I really enjoy my reading, especially NYTimes article and would like to say that in my opinion information research problems mostly depends not from credibility of sources or specific methods of doing research, but from personal experience and intellectual level of researcher. After all, Dorothy realized pretty quick how to survive, even before she understand that it was not a Kansas.

Reinhold’s article gives an almost too accurate prediction.

Leave a reply

While reading the New York Times article “Study says technology could transform society” by Robert Reinhold, I was amazed by how spot on some of their predictions were.  Especially when I read this “there will be a shift away from conventional workplace and school socialization. Friends, peer groups and alliances will be determined electronically, creating classes of people based on interests and skills rather than age and social class.” They basically predicted the whole social network phenomenon (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and etc.) and how people are now able to connect in new ways.  We are no longer bound by the old social constructs that they had in their time.  All you need now is a screen name/handle and you can talk to almost anyone who shares the same interests as you.  They even mentioned that there might be some unintended social side effects although at the time they did not know what it would be.  Unfortunately the side effect is a loss of some basic social skills, now someone will take their phone out in the middle of a conversation just to update their page.  Eye contact is slowly becoming a lost art, as more of us make it with our phone than with each other.  This article leaves me to wonder what side effect the next technological innovation will bring.