Cyberculture

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Cyberculture

Through new technologies including computers, World Wide Web, and email, we have seen many changes the way we think about and carry out the process of writing. While most seem to welcome new technologies others like Sven Birkets believe these new technologies are hurting the learning process. He writes, “Many educators say that our students are less and less able to read, or analyze, or write with clarity and purpose. Who can blame the students? Everything they meet with in the world around them gives the signal: That was then, and electronic communications are now (63). This “cyberculture” that we are a part of has truly changed the way we currently live our lives. If we use new technologies to enhance learning and not it’s primary source we as a culture, a “cyberculture” will be able to make even greater advances than previously anticipated. Presently the need for actual printed textbooks is on the decline and is sure to continue as we move further into the future.

I was first introduced to computers in the early 1980’s and have witnessed first hand the advancements we as a culture have made over the past twenty years. I have gone from the green screen that we learned create a program that would make our name repeat itself on the screen, to creating a full functioning web page. The computer games have come a long way as well. There were two games on our school computers when I first started, “Lemonade stand” and “Lawnmower”. These were very basic games that were very badly animated if you could chose to call it animation. These games didn’t have a hand controller since the “Joy stick” wasn’t invented yet. The games of today look as though a movie crew has filmed them. The first word processing programs had to be loaded by disk each time you wanted to use them and were quite expensive. Today the programs are already loaded and stored in the computer and the expense is very minimal. Our word processing programs can check for spelling and punctuation errors as well as grammar mistakes. For those who have grown up with this option it may not seem like a big deal but for those of us that learned to type on a typewriter that wasn’t even electric these advances are enormous.

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