Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Learning Things

There are many ways to express ourselves while writing in this new age of computers. We can experiment with color, and font, changing to suit our moods. With different fonts we may want the look of classical print with in black or something more modern in bold colors. Pictures can be found on the internet or our own hard drives, stashed there from personal events recorded in digital cameras, or sent via e-mail from friends and family and inserted onto the electronic page. These images can be chopped, air-brushed, and edited to make them perfect. This electronic page can then be viewed by as many people as the writer wants, depending on where it is sent or written.

Does this then detract from the old ways, pen or pencil in hand, pressed to paper forming words to make images in the mind? Every word forever embellished onto a piece of precious paper, often times hoarded for just this purpose. Cave paintings were created with the crudest of implements and resources available to the creator. Now they are viewed in awe. Old photographs were snapshots of the moment, forever set as visual recordings of time and events as they happened. Both are treasured as much or more than present day photographs, often digitized beyond the moment, rendering them as untrue images. Which is better? The image as it happened, possibly with a thumb over the lens, or one electronically rendered perfect to the human eye.

Learning has many advantages, strengthening the mind and freshening one's perspective of one's own life. Learning keeps a person's personal pond of water from becoming stagnant, chocked with weeds and debris. It makes us better, more rounded human beings, in touch with the world. It gives us a more rounded vocabulary and makes us more interesting conversationalists. Most of us anyway.

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