Dear Editor:
A typical man or woman of any age, when confronted with the need to obtain information, will respond by saying “I’ll look it up in the computer.”
In this manner, they will have quick access to the facts and figures which they require and then will proceed in their pursuit of further convenient responses to their inquiries.
Is their any devious undercurrent to this current style of eliciting knowledge at an accelerated rate? Is this immediate access to facts and data undermining our search for personal creativity and is not the push-button mentality beginning to gain sway over whatever imaginative powers we may possess.
Yes, the library is still here to provide literary nourishment but it is becoming increasingly apparent that many walls which, heretofore, were lined with books now find themselves being insidiously infiltrated by rows of computers, ever ready to display the value of speed over concentration.
Let us now enter the land of language which at the mercy of e-mail, is being assaulted and debased by an entirely new jargon which has left the beauty of handwritten letters a lost art, very likely never to return — it is interesting to conceive of Elizabeth Barrett Browning using e-mail.
Perhaps those individuals occupying the highest levels of technological wizardry do not understand from the perspective of the upper echelon of applied sciences enjoy the stimulation attendant to their class.
It is said that you should rule your mind or it will rule you and it is certain that, if you allow it to become slothful, a lazy mind will make a lazy person. Advancement and discovery should be pursued, but not at the expense of your imaginative and creative possession for the sake of velocity.
Indeed, we have become the tools of our tools. Instead of occasionally reaching down to the ground of our being for our potential fulfillment, we are becoming a breathing part of technology, nothing more.
Howard Lawson