An Inconvenient Truth: A Lack of Books

It is said that within the next twenty years, paper books will be completely replaced by technology.

This Saturday, Apple's newest creation, the iPad, came out. And, being the techie that I am, I immediately read about two dozen reviews to see how it compared to other Apple products. As almost all the more complimentary reviews read, the iPad is a real game changer in multiple ways: it can outright replace many, if not most, of the computing (internet) needs, and it seems that as the glitches are worked out, and the next generations come out, it will most likely be able to replace computers entirely.

Alongside that article was a blurb on how paper books are being replaced. Amazon's Kindle, and now the iPad have the ability to completely replace the printed book. They have ways to store books so that one only has to carry around one small device for several hundred books. As much as I like the idea of being able to carry around all the books I want to read at once, eventually as everyone begins to own one of these devices, it is so difficult to comprehend that within a generation or two they could stop being used.

I think that having an iPad or Kindle (especially since they have expanding functions, like internet) would be extremely convenient for the user, but I hesitate to get one of these devices no matter how useful they may be. Like any device, a book reader can crash. And reading on a screen is just different than reading an actual book.

Although it will take time to accept, it seems that the reign of books that have been used for centuries is soon to be over. I think that the only way to really get used to the fact that books are being replaced by internet-based technology is to keep the ones I have in good condition, and continue to buy paper books in lieu of using an iPad or Kindle for reading books online.

Dialectics: Time and Control (Pan's Labyrinth)

In Spanish these past few weeks, our class has been studying the Spanish Civil War. In order to demonstrate the impact of the war on its youth and Ana Maria Matute (who's stories we've been reading for the past two months), we watched Pan's Labyrinth. The movie centers on a young Ofelia, who is journeying with her pregnant mother to the countryside to live with her stepfather, an influential general of Francisco Franco.

In the several carefully crafted scenes that focus on the Captain, we learn that he is extremely obsessed with leaving a legacy to his son, like his father did to him. On the day of his death, the Captain's father took his pocketwatch and smashed it into a rock, to be collected by one of his men so that his son would know the exact time that he died. In the specific scene where time and control become extremely related, we see the Captain continually glancing at his watch (the ticking is the only real sound we hear) as he shaves using a razor blade. At the end of the scene, he puts the razor up to his neck in the mirror and slices.

I think that this scene in particular shows how time and control inform each other. The dialectic of control and time shows how people obsessively control and record every aspect of their lives until they die, so as to record the precise moment of their death to be remembered forever. I also think that in this particular situation, we see how (later) the captain uses his stopwatch as a way to control the situation around him even when it's not in his favor.

I think the real connection between time and control is that as time goes on, one gains more control over their life until their peak, when they once again lose control (like a parabola). In the case of the Captain, I think that his obsessive mindset over controlling his life until the moment he dies is what really creates the dialectic here: control is what time really is. Time is a way of controlling exactly when something happens, or when someone is born or dies.

Blogging Around

Anna, Best of the Week: Epiphany (from Cathedral)
Anna's post was about how we can learn from the epiphany that the man in Cathedral has
I definitely agree with you, Anna. I think that the way the man in Cathedral experiences his epiphany is extremely important. I also like what you said about how one small "aha!" moment can cause bigger changes in a person's life. I think that it's important to reflect on moments like this and use them in order to reflect and grow. I think that the author's style - and by extent the man's style - is very important here; his reflection of the epiphany is one of amazement and wonder. Overall, I think that many of your observations were very astute.

Lauren, An Inconvenient Truth: Food, Inc.
Lauren's post was about the way the production and consumption of food has changed and become more monetarily focused
I also saw this movie, and found that it really affected my perspective on the food industry. I really like how you used this to pull from freshman year; the idea of how this is related to Ishmael and the Fall of the world was really an astute observation. I agree with you that the increases in population have led us to take drastic and terrible measures, and I think that it's ridiculous how having more people on the planet have decreased our humanity.