Cursive

My home state of Kansas is discussing the place of cursive handwriting in the education curriculum. That they are also discussing the place of evolution (as well as science in general) in the curriculum should be a clue to the perspective of those leading the discussion. One state board member, Walt Chappell (consider his name is “Walt”), argues that students should learn to write longhand because “We’ve got to be able to communicate with each other in written form. . . . Technology is great, but it doesn’t always work.” Well, yes, but pencil and pen – two other technologies – don’t always work either.

I was in a writing assessment workshop a couple of years ago where we read about 20 papers written in class by college students. Bored by the papers and the workshop, I noticed at one point that all of the 20 papers – all of them – were printed by hand, not cursive. After that, I started paying attention to my own students’ in-class writing, and found very few of them used cursive. It just isn’t a skill that is taught – or needed – anymore.

Not that it has for a long time. I suffered through cursive during my elementary years at Adams Elementary, all the swirls and squiggles and connectives (how do you make a “z”?). But by the 7^th grade (this is 50 years ago) I had turned to hand printing my notes and papers, unless required to employ cursive by some coprolite teacher (which was thankfully not often (except for the blue-haired Miss Gates in 8^th grade English who regularly confused penmanship with good writing)). Over my junior high and high school days, my printing evolved into what I took to be a personal style with a certain amount of panache. It took me several years going through two or three versions to come up with an “a” that I thought was worthy.

But cursive writing is the buggy whip of communication. It came about at a time when almost all written communication, personal and business, was by hand, and it was important that everyone could read everyone else’s handwriting. So a standardized style wad needed. But that was before typewriters were common, let alone computers. If we have to write anything by hand anymore it’s almost always for ourselves, so it doesn’t matter if we’re the only ones who can decipher it. And today printing by hand is generally more easily read by others if need be (rarely) than cursive (which few of us can do legibly anymore).

Handwriting should still be taught in elementary school. But printing, not cursive. And along with it, keyboarding. No, technology doesn’t always work. But when all else fails, we could just talk with each other for a while. Or enjoy the silence.

Ticonderoga #2

On my walk this morning, near the high school, I came across a pencil lying on the sidewalk, apparently dropped from the pocket or backpack of a student. It was something of a surprise, like coming across a fossil in a streambed. Do they really still use pencils? Why? And for what? Don’t they have computers and iPads and calculators and, in a pinch, pens? I tried to think when the last time I used a pencil was. I have two large coffee mugs on the desk in my office with a few pencils in each, but can’t recall using any of them in at least several years, maybe five or eight or ten. If I ever have to write on paper – not very often, phone messages and shopping lists mostly – it’s always with a pen. I thought it might be at a hotel, where they provide a slim pad of paper and writing implement beside the phone, but it’s been I don’t know how long since the writing implement was a pencil and not a pen. And several times in the past few years there hasn’t been any pad of paper or pen or pencil, the assumption being that you had a computer or smartphone for any notes – written or oral – you might need to make. The world is digital and probably will forever be, and that’s probably for the good. But for a moment this morning, striding across that dropped Ticonderoga #2 on the sidewalk, a pang of nostalgia crossed my memory. And I wondered – did the student who drop it even ever miss it?

My iPhone and I

My sister emailed today to say she’s considering getting an iPhone and wondered what kind of cover I have for mine. Seems her daughter (my niece) has something called an “Otter Box” for her iPhone, which apparently she drops regularly and needs some kind of super protection. I didn’t even know there were covers for iPhones, let alone a wide selection. I thought about lying and saying something like “Yeah, the Otter Box looks good, but I went with the Squirrel Pack because I always drop my iPhone on grass or carpet,” but decided to tell the truth – my pocket.

I got my iPhone about 3½ years ago, as a present from my wife for my 60^th birthday. I really didn’t need or want a cell phone, let alone an iPhone, but my wife thought that I should at least make an attempt at entering the 21^st century. For most of the first year, I used my iPhone primarily as a paperweight. But as I learned more of its functions, especially email, internet, GPS, and weather, I began using it more. At some point I even began using the phone function, though only when on trips. I’m now – three years in – using not only the phone and email and internet and GPS but also a host of apps. But no games, and definitely no texting – I’m practical, not insane.

My current usage at the end of this month is 28 of 450 available minutes (I assume that’s phone). There’s something called N&W of which I’ve used 0 of 5,000. And I’ve only used 1 of my unlimited M2Ms (whatever they are). And 0 of 4,182 ROs (and whatever those are, I lose 390 of them in two weeks, though that leaves me with 3,792, of which I’ll probably use another 0, if only because I don’t know what ROs are or how to use them if I wanted to).

So you can see that I really don’t have a need for an iPhone cover, Otter or Squirrel.

The Future of Reading

In schools and colleges, in these audio-visual days, doubt has been raised as to the future of reading – whether the printed word is on its last legs. One college president has remarked that in fifty years "only five per cent of the people will be reading.”

E.B. White, “The Future of Reading” (1951)

It’s now been more than sixty years since this was written, and it might be argued that not only are there more than five percent of the people reading, but that with the Internet there are more by percentage reading today than there were sixty years ago. Technology is funny that way. In those “audio-visual days” of 1951 – radio, phonograph, film, and television – there must have been a perceived threat to the printed word. Why read when you can just listen or watch? But then why go to the theater or ballet or concert or symphony, all of which are accessible by audio-visual technology? And the Internet expands those audio-visual possibilities. But it also expands the reading possibilities. It may well be that electronic communication increases rather than restricts communication. White goes on to write, “Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy. . . . This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.” Maybe. And I’m hesitant to go against the thought of E.B. White, for me, the grand American writer and thinker of the 20^th century. But it might just be that technological advances can broaden our means of communication (including reading), its “sublimity and power,” rather than constrict it, as long as we keep it all connected, particularly connected to our thought, our experience, and our imagination.

Check Engine Light

I just spent $70.20 to have my car’s gas cap tightened. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but not much. Last week, as I was driving down the highway using cruise control, the cruise control suddenly shut off and the “Check Engine” light came on and the “Cruise Control” light began flashing. I didn’t panic. This had happened to me last summer, and I read in the manual that it might be the gas cap, and sure enough, when I got gas the next day the lights went out and all was fine. So this time, I pulled over, unscrewed the gas cap, and then screwed it back on tightly. But the lights were still on. So a bit further down the road, I pulled in to fill up with gas, though I had half a tank. But after filling up and securing the cap again, the lights remained on. I figured it must be, or at least might be, something other than the gas cap, and more important (the “Check Engine” light is pretty ominous). When I got home, I called Evan, my mechanic of 30 years, he said to bring it in, I did, waited while one of his guys worked on it for maybe 15 minutes (including driving it into and out of the garage), and then was told it was indeed the gas cap, they had fixed it, and that the bill was $70.20 (one hour labor, no parts, it being merely a re-tightening of the cap). And should it happen again, they would have to replace the gas cap, though that would only be $16.34 – for the cap; the labor would be another $70.20.

I recall the first car I bought with power windows, a 1985 Honda Civic. It also had cruise control, power-operated side-view mirrors, rear-window defroster, and I don’t know what else. I hesitated. It’s always struck me that the more technologically advanced a car (or just about anything else) becomes, the more that can go wrong with it, probably by a factor of 10 for each “advance,” and that the cost for repair also goes up by about the same 10 times. That’s the way progress works. And progress sucks.

Popcorn Brain

As if I needed another malady to worry about, apparently I now suffer from something called “popcorn brain.” This is a condition discovered (or at least championed) by researcher David Levy of the University of Washington who defines the disorder as “a brain so accustomed to the constant stimulation of electronic multitasking that we're unfit for life offline, where things pop at a much slower pace.” I didn’t realize that things “popped” offline or on, slow or fast, but then I’m not a professor in the Information School (aren’t all schools “information schools” in the broad view of things?). The threat is that all the digital stimulus that most of us are constantly and simultaneously engaged in – email, texting, Facebook, Twitter, surfing the net, iPod, etc. – is basically feeding our brain’s inclination to instant gratification and zapping us of our ability to engage in face-to-face human interaction. As Stanford social psychologist Clifford Nass warns, “Human interaction is a learned skill, and [multitaskers] don't get to practice it enough."

There may well be something to this – I’m not one to argue with scientists and PhDs – but I’ve been a multitasker since long before computers. Back in the olden days of the 1960s and 1970s, during my high school and college fog, I don’t know that I ever was not doing at least two, and often three or more things at a time – reading (a textbook or comic book as the case might be), watching TV, listening to the radio or stereo, sometimes typing a paper (the night before it was due), and/or talking on the phone (a black rotary).

And there have for ages been warnings about the dangers of new technologies on the human brain and human interactions. Not to get too Greeky, but in Phaedrus, Plato complained that the then-new technology of the written word threatened the interactive quality of the spoken word as well as the need for memory, that people would “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction” and “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” Similarly, when Gutenberg unleashed his printing press in the 15^th century, Italian editor Hieronimo Squarciafico argued that making books easily available to all would lead to “less studiousness,” mental laziness, and a general weakening of minds. And we all know the ravages that movies, TV, and rock-and-roll were going to bring upon our civilization in the past century.

Truth be told, whatever brain we have now – popcorn or popover – is the brain we’ve had for hundreds of thousands of years. The brain of the genius who discovered fire or invented the wheel is much the same as the brain of Michelangelo or Shakespeare or Einstein or Stephen Hawking or Dylan. We evolve. Our technology evolves. But my hunch is that our brains remain pretty much the same, wonderfully able to adapt to whatever messes we happen to get ourselves into, technologically or otherwise.

My iPhone

When I turned 60 a couple of years ago, my wife went out on a very thin limb and bought me an iPhone 3G, thus making me the last human on Earth to own a cell phone. I’d never had any use for a cell phone (discounting telemarketers and wrong numbers, I receive about two phone calls a week and make about the same). But I had been following the hype of the iPhone and was somewhat curious about all the bells and whistles (not actual bells and whistles, of course; I don’t know when actual bells and whistles stopped being included in appliances) that the iPhone promised – the internet, email, gps, camera, video, radio, iPod, and oh the billions of apps. I was dubious when I unwrapped the package and saw what it was. Not only do I not have much need of a phone, but my history with all technologies is a sad trail of confusion, contusions, and creative cursing. I dropped the phone while taking it out of the box, bouncing it off the floor. But I gave the iPhone a chance. The gift was well-meaning and intended to bring me at least into the late 20^th century, if not the early 21^st. And two years later, I use my iPhone regularly. I check the weather several times a day. I surf the internet, read newspapers, listen to radio, check my email, read books, try to find myself with gps, find restaurants, etc. with my four pages of apps. I’m still learning, and have a ways to go. (I don’t text message and never will. What’s the purpose?) But the one thing I still rarely use on my iPhone is the phone function itself. I happened today for the first time in two years to go into my usage summary for the current billing cycle (halfway through the month), and this is what I found:

Anytime Minutes	39 of 450
Night & Weekend	74 of 5000
Rollover Minutes	0 of 4257

Anybody want to buy some minutes? As I said, I don’t have a big need for a phone. I’m glad I have it. But my fascination is with the convergence of all the technologies into one gadget. And I’m considering looking into the iPhone4 (hey, it has video). But it’s a slippery slope. The iPhone5 – or whatever – is sure to be just months away. Maybe they’ll phone me when it comes out. Or text.