In My Corner

When the National Geographic subscription expires, I try to make justification for not renewing the $39 magazine when most other periodicals are $6-$10. The next issue contains an article that blows my mind and I write the check.

Newspapers are important for keeping up with area events but they are outdated as technology moves their format to the LCD screen as it continues its encroachment on our lives in an often not-so-positive way. Current events were once relegated to day-old deployment and in another life as a classroom teacher, I was excited when every morning the early internet brought us relevant information that I could share with students.

They weren’t filled with the computer’s “green screen” fervor as was I, but that all changed when encyclopedic knowledge became available with only a few clicks and we soon learned which sources were reliable. Fake news goes back a long way!

From reports to term papers to doctorate dissertations, the word processing ability of the computer makes it easy to make corrections, move blocks of text, check for spelling and grammar, dictionary and thesaurus running in the background. Keyboard training will become unnecessary with voice commands and technology to interface the brain directly with the internet.

The stream of data in today’s academia makes it hard to process one event before another supercedes it in real time. How can a term paper be accurate with new discoveries every millisecond? Will artificial intelligence update the document while it awaits grading in the cloud?