The above written quote was Googled, copied and pasted. Period
Ideas are copied, actions are copied, even mistakes are, but those are more visceral actions. Not conscious ones, as a kid in 3rd class might buy a pair of aviator styled sunglasses, wear Lee Cooper maroon coloured shirt and go out, walk with style spitting chewing gum on his left and smirk while lowering his sunglasses and wink at the round faced girls in his class who might lend him their butterfly themed and florescent coloured neatly covered notebooks and become the centre of attention and gossip, and generate envious classmates in the tuition at 5 in the evening. The next day all dude classmates end up doing it, fighting with their mums to get those sunglasses.
But that was more emotional method and copying something really trendy and stylish was never a stupid thing to do. Awkward, may be, wrong, never, as stylistic influences were always a part of inspiration and as the kids would attempt impressing those girls, they might end up choosing a better wardrobe, and showing signs of creativity. Where they faltered were, when they asked for those notebooks and copied the content of the borrowed notebooks, word to word and got green stars from their teachers for submitting their home works on time.
Probably it was the error in teaching methodologies, or the pressure of deadlines, or the way we were brought up, but that is not the point of discussion here right now. The point is when they used to copy they read the content and wrote at-least in their notebooks, therefore when their teachers asked the content on page 5 they would raise hands and answer.
But as those kids grew up, and they became we, also, the computer became smarter as we did and that inherent intension of scoring green stars turned into a desire of getting rid of a task, that we feel isn’t credible enough, and hence should be over as soon as possible, sometimes it could be extracting appreciation from a client or a manager. The inspiration of doing right and doing it all by ourselves, was taken over by paired keystrokes, ctrl+c and ctrl+v, keystrokes for Copying and Pasting, the CP technology.
While those of the smarter kids, used to read and re-work it, would later on become the creative ones as inspiration would lead to motivation and motivation would lead to solving the problem, reworking would help in exploring leading to knowledge and thus solving the same problem in a different way, reinventing technology and thus ending up being more successful.
Rest of us chose routines, we accept tasks, out of our disgust and because there is no way out, and because we earn through it, we google, even the nature of it, find an approximate solution, without even considering its consequences, we put it in our PPTs, present it, then if there is a criticism, we simply say we didn’t think about it, and then we google something else, we present it and after multiple iterations of ideas and routines and discussions we do find a solution to the problem, but all that stays with us is, that answers can be googled, assignments can be submitted, exams can be cleared yet nothing can be really understood.
Thus we don’t discover anything new, in our lives, we simply distribute anguish, we are tired of routines, and then we unload it on our future generations.
And then we complain,life, is so boring.
I guess it is what we do with technology that counts. Copying and pasting are an easy option and you are right, Of itself, simply to get rid of a task, it doesn't give us understanding. Sometimes our schools foolishly inundate us with homework and encourage us to use that CP technology.
ReplyDeleteReading and understanding what we've CPed is knowledge. And finally, reading through several viewpoints, might even give us a balanced viewpoint.