Entry Zwei - Illiteracy

In our current time, being illiterate is one of, if not the hardest, disability to overcome. It is very easy to say that without reading or writing one cannot get very far in this world. The prompt asks us to brainstorm a list of things that one is unable to do while being illiterate, the word "anything" came to mind first. What can someone without being able to read or write actually do? It is hard to imagine going through the world without these two basic and essential parts of of life.

Going back to the list that I made the first thing I thought of, besides "anything," was not being able to read any information from the internet. This is easily a technology based era, when your cellphone can do anything you want it to do and have another 5,000 other functions, you would be screwed if you tried to get something simple, like the local news, off the internet. The way we use the internet these days is more than enough for people involved in news to realize putting information online is a better way to get to their audience; although one might argue you can still get information from the nightly news, how much of that information is relevant or the stories you want to know about. For example, in California an Earthquake, of almost any caliber, is enough to trump anything else going on in that particular news day; if you live no where near the epicenter of the quake you will still only get news revolving around it, and most likely not hear the news you want for that day. The next best thing to do is to check the internet, it is almost guaranteed someone will have reported about what you want, but if you can't read what you want to know, you'll be way out of luck.

Being a big fan of technology it's no surprise that the second thing on my list of what you can't do if you were illiterate was the inability to text, update your facebook status, or do the twitter thing. I personally don't twitter but thousands upon thousands of people do, unable to write or read would make websites like twitter and facebook obsolete. People always want to know what their friends or family are doing, facebook and twitter are two of the most popular ways of doing this. Because we live in this technologically advanced age, no one wants to call someone up to tell them their daily plans, when a cellphone accessible website is so much more convenient. If you plan to be socially active while being illiterate you are going to have a tough time finding out exactly when, where, and what your friends are going to be doing.

So basically, to me, being illiterate would easily destroy more than half my life, simply based on how often I used the internet. Unless you can find everything you need in the form of an audio medium, being unable to read or write will possibly annihilate the chance to live a "normal" life.

Entry Eins

Hmmm critical thinking, what does it mean? For me it is a process of examining parts of our lives, whether its a choice we made or maybe looking at a book we read; thinking critically is the way we look at ourselves or others and compare it to how we feel or maybe the actions that we take. Has a friend or family member ever done something where you thought, "Would I do the same thing in that situation?" You examined what they did or did not do, and decided for yourself that is was either ultimately right or worng and then how you felt about it. Could a better action been taken or was it the best answer at the time? That's what I believe happens when decide to look at our lives and think critically of ourselves.

When thinking about this in terms of reading, we must go passed what we actually read and try to see the thoughts of the author behind the words. We should try to figure out a deeper meaning and compare it to the world around us for a better understanding of both the written work and where the author is coming from when they wrote their story. When I read I try to pick out deeper meanings as best as I can, even though I'm most definitely not the best at it. Picking out a change in tone or word choice may show the author's ture feeling on the situation. After I pick something out I compare it to how we live now and how this work may impact it.

Even though this is how I feel about critical thinking, unfortunately I don't personally do it in my life all that often. I tend to live and look at things on the top layer; although from time to time I look at a piece of news and start to examine it and try to discover a deeper meaning. The news is usually something of a political nature because it is one of the easier areas of real life to look at and say "What would I really about this or that? Would it be better than what was done?"

As I said earlier I am not the best at viewing things critically or seeing a deeper meaning, so through the course of ENGL 103 I hope to get a better understanding of what it means to look at something in a critical way in both written works and real life. As of right now it is fairly difficult for me to look at written work and come to a conclusion that is not totally obvious, hopefully through the work we do here and the discussions we have I can personally get a better understanding of this and come out better than before. Lastly, after the course is completed I hope to see the world for what it really is or at least be able to look at a piece of news and be able to dissect it to get the relevant information from it that I need.



I apologize of any spelling or grammar mistakes.