Change is Good

In her podcast, Lisa Jardine explained that many early scholars were overwhelmed with the amount of information that was available to them. They felt responsible for knowing certain things, but felt that they didn’t have enough time to soak up all the information.

Jardine talked about how people reacted to changes in technology in the past. She talked used an information storage system that held various readers’ notes on certain books as an example of tis technology. Instead of actually reading the book, you could just read someone else’s notes and save time. Today, we use similar systems to find information on the Internet.

Jardine stressed that early scholars felt that “…mastering the sum of human knowledge [was] an impossible task.” People still feel this way today, and are even more overwhelmed by the vast supply of information that the Internet holds. With the use of the Internet we have been able to acquire quick knowledge on endless topics. Those of us who feel overwhelmed by the Internet’s expanse of information and the change that its use has brought to our lives are no different than the early scholars who stressed about the growing amount of information.

In When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, Carolyn Marvin states, “We are not the first generation to wonder at the rapid and extraordinary shifts in the dimension of the world…or to be surprised by the changes those shifts occasion in the regular pattern of our lives,” (1). I completely agree with Marvin and still hold the same opinion that I did in my last blog. We should not be afraid of the change that the Internet and other future technologies will bring us. It is natural for societies to develop and become more efficient. We should learn to adapt to the new technologies and use them to the best of our ability. 

1.Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies Were New. “Epilogue.” 1988.