Scholarly Article #3 - "Gains and Losses: New Forms of Text, Knowledge, and Learning" by Gunther Kress

It's very interesting how this article compared the written word and the viewed image, or rather, the book and the webpage. It seems to me that books are more controlled by authors, who assume that readers will follow a certain order (i.e., on the page, in a chapter, in the book) whereas the creators of a webpage cannot control who visits a website and what the visitors will make of it. Webpages can be accessed through many points of entry in comparison to the one found on a written page. While the internet and multimedia are amazing, I see why some people are concerned about the diminishing of the written word. Our culture has become so fast-paced in the world of social media that many do not ever slow down to read a book. This decline can be seen in the lack of writing skills of the younger generations. We rely on images to communicate, and so we do not learn to actually write. As an editor, I see this in the papers that I review, and it can be pretty depressing. I wish there was a way to make reading a social event—something to be discussed with friends—to rival social media, but with the way we're going, I have little hope that will ever happen.

Scholarly Article #2 - "The Museum of Me" by Ellen Ullman

In "The Museum of Me," Ellen Ullman essentially says that the World Wide Web has led to the deterioration of shared culture by replacing that culture with sharp individualism. In other words, we don't have to deal with middlemen anymore; we can do what we want without the need for travel agents, shop clerks, and so forth. Ullman portrays this as a bad thing, but has it really been different for the advent of any other media? When the printing press came and people learned to read, they didn't have to rely on the pope to tell them what to think. When live television came about, the audience could listen to a president's speech directly and form their own opinions without news anchors telling them what to think. So is what Ullman describes really anything new? No, it's not.

Also, just because the web can lead to isolation doesn't mean it always does. Sure, you can book your whole vacation from your home computer, but you can also jump on Facebook and have discussions with other people. It's simply a different way of sharing ideas. I do think, however, that overexposure to the web can certainly lead to poor social skills. But that's why we have to have balance in our lives. And it's not a web developers job to babysit us to make sure we have social time outside. We have to be accountable for ourselves, not just blame it on the technology for cutting out the need to go outside. Come on! Take some responsibility!