What's Next?

A few days ago, my mom bought a kindle. I had never been a huge fan of them, because I liked the idea of holding on to the actual book while reading it. This brought me to thinking about where technology was headed in the future. The crowd of Kindle and Nook users seem to becoming younger and younger. Do that mean in the future our kids going to first learn to read on an e-reader? To me, it's a weird thought. Remembering my childhood and learning how to read, I remember looking closely at the pictures on the page, and the books that i especially liked were those that you would flip open a picture to discover another picture. The Kindle and Nook would never have the same effect, though.


But looking at this topic on a broader level, something else i have always wondered, was if we would ever take it too far. Technology is a way of making our lives easier and more simple. But in the long run, it has a very negative effect on our society; the main problem being energy and pollution. With more and more gadgets being released, it seems we become much lazier. Everything has to be done automatically for us. This triggers many people to think of robots. Could they take over our jobs, so people are left doing nothing?


With every new item coming out, it makes us wonder is there really more to come, and is this really good in the long run.

Ignorance Is Bliss

Yesterday for American Studies class, we went downtown to see the play "Clybourne Park." In the first act of the play, a white family was selling their house to an African American family, and the community did not want them to. One of the characters was a deaf woman, and I think she was the most interesting character portrayed in the play. What I found so fascinating, was how the other characters could say something to her, but she would, obviously, have no idea what they were saying, so it meant absolutely nothing to her. What they said had absolutely no meaning. In reality, I think that we do a similar thing often. If we don't want to hear something, we just cover our ears, and act like nothing was said at all, and so it has no meaning to us, either.

This reminded me of the saying "ignorance is bliss." When I looked up the exact definition of the phrase, it said "Not knowing something is often more comfortable than knowing it." This is exactly what was happening in the play, and also occurs in real life. We think that if you don't know something, it's as if it never happened at all, which we all wish were true sometimes, but of course, is not. After discussing this in class and thinking about it after the play, I kept thinking about how words have absolutely no meaning to some people (like the deaf woman), but also have absolutely no meaning at all sometimes, and that is sometimes the best for us. 

This saying "ignorance is bliss" contrasts another part in the play, where after the African American family left the house, the white man started talking poorly about them. The African American man, having just left the house, could hear them talking and came back inside very angry. If he had not heard them talk about it, it would not been a big deal at all, because he didn't know and it meant nothing to him. This ignorance probably would have been better than him hearing what they said. In this situation it was probably better to be ignorant about what they were saying, rather than hearing them.

Protected or Limited?

Today while driving home from school, there was a commercial that had a very realistic siren playing during it. As my friends and I heard this, we were confused whether they should be allowed to play that on the radio, because many people could think of it as an actual siren.


This reminded me back to the day in class earlier this month, where we were given scenarios and had to determine if it was a protected or limited right.


Should that be allowed in a commercial that most people hear while driving in their car? It is a very similar scenario to the one in class, which was someone shouting fire in a situation that would cause panic, such as in a movie theatre. This turned out to be limited, so shouldn't a siren playing during a commercial be treated similarly?


This is certainly a situation that I think could cause panic to the driver, so I think that it should be limited just like the movie theatre scenario.

The Cost To Learn

While looking at the Chicago Tribune website, I came across an article talking about New Trier's textbook prices, and how expensive it is to rent textbooks every year for school.


At New Trier, sports teams are free for anyone who joins. However, this may not be the case in the upcoming years. As a way to lower the prices of textbooks, they are thinking of charging for sports teams, so it's not one huge payment at once.


The argument against that, however, states that different sports teams require different amounts of equipment, so they shouldn't all be the same price. For example, football or lacrosse have a lot more equipment needed than track and field or basketball. I don't think this is the best idea, because while some people play 3 sports during the school year, some people don't play any, so it is cheaper for them.


I think overall textbooks could be much cheaper, or some not even used at all, and that would solve a lot of these problems. For example, last year in my chemistry class, i used my textbook once for a homework assignment. My teacher could have very well gone without doing that one homework assignment, to save us all from buying that expensive book.


There are so many books students buy every year that barely ever get used, so what should they have to buy them? Families with multiple kids going through high school spend thousands of dollars at the New Trier bookstore to buy their kids the textbooks they need, which maybe not every family can afford.


Article: http://triblocal.com/winnetka-northfield/2011/10/05/new-trier-to-discuss-athletics-fees-to-subsidize-textbook-costs/