I thoroughly enjoyed the reading that was given. I like the writing style of Badke, particularly how he manages to hold my attention with the sly and mostly humorous remarks he makes (reminds me of that guy…..me). I also like how he brings his 25+ years of experience into every part of the book. While still maintaining an unbiased perspective regardless of the matter, except plagiarism. As a certain wise man once said ” A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence” (name withheld, it isn’t me either).
I found the reading to be quite informative due to the way the author showed a chronological timeline of how (in)accessible information has been over the years. From speech and public demonstrations (section 1.1) to the Africans during their civil war(section 1.1) (note to self: find out just how edible a rose is) to the beginning of the print press by Gutenberg (how old was he when he finally spelt his whole name? i say 27). To modern day e-readers, all the way up to the Ipad. Now that’s current.
Throughout chapters 1 and 8 he provides us with advantages and disadvantages to the way information is published and the different methods for research. However, in the beginning when listing the way information is made available, i feel he neglected to show us the advantage in memorizing the text for oral transmission. I say this because it’s become a problem in our society today that people can’t seem to memorize the basic things like phone numbers, birthdays,addresses,birthdays, names, birthdays,appointments have i mentioned birthdays? etc. I may be biased in bringing this up because my birthday just passed and some people didn’t know it because it wasn’t in their phone or because i’m not on facebook. I think this is a bigger problem in that technology has made us lazier as a whole. At this rate we’re heading towards those guys in scooter/chair hybrids in the movie Wall-E (no relation,mine has only one L). He (the man Badke) didn’t have to point out all i did, but he could have stayed the course and provided us with both pro and cons of every advancement, starting with the original method. I believe doing this would make us more cautious and reflect a little before jumping onto the next trendy device (no offense Kindle).
