I'm Back

Hello.  I'm back again after nearly a year of nothingness, and this time I am blogging only because I want to, not because it is a class requirement. 

Since I changed the focus of my blog, I have also changed the title to something that better encompasses what I want to blog about.  I plan for this blog to be about the process of learning Chinese, and about the process of writing novels.  Basically, I write about the process of learning about "characters," both Chinese and fictional.

Hopefully my Digital Civilization professor will forgive me for this departure into non academia.  I will try to keep the part about the Chinese academic at least. And, rather than simply spout off my opinion about anything, I will always try to give it within some context of what other people are saying (a very academic concept).  I'll do this, not because I want my blog to be "scholarly" exactly, but because I want it to actually help people who are interested in the same things I am.

Hopefully, this will be fun.

This is Not the End

I realized yesterday that I can't handle two math classes, a Chinese class, and my Digital Civilization class this semester.  Therefore, I have just dropped the Digital Civilization class.  I'm sorry to have to do this, but I know it's the right thing for right now.  I am glad that I was able to spend my first two weeks in this class though.  I learned a lot.

My plans for this blog aren't finalized yet.  I think I may still blog about my other classes, for now, and sometime later I may use it to take this class again.  Anyway, to all my classmates, it's been fun blogging with you.

I haven't made this apparent on my blog, until now, but I love languages.  Recently I've realized that one of the main things that separates humans from animals is the way we communicate with each other.  Animals communicate through signals, and sometimes sounds, but these are based on instinct.  Although humans also have instinctive signals, such as the smile, we base much of our communication on sounds that have no meanings themselves, assigning different meanings to particular sound patterns.  Although the meanings of the sounds are not based on instinct, our desire to develop symbolic representations for our thoughts is.

Cultural Revolution

Just as the invention of the printing press caused huge changes in 1400s, the internet is changing our world today.  Originally, printing made mass distribution of the written world possible, but because of the internet written information can now be made available to millions of people without being printed at all.  It seems that, after 500 years, society is finally moving beyond printing to text files stored on computers.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I found an interesting article that compares the societal upheaval after the printing press to the situation in our time just after the rise of the internet.  It makes some of the same points  as the assigned reading in my digital civ class, but it also talks about the importance of experimenting with the internet in order to get ahead in this new society that's forming.

I think that the the migration of the written word from paper to the internet is just one example of society becoming centered on the digital rather than the physical world.  Our professors recently posted about whether this shift is good or bad, and some of the students had different opinions.  I think, at least in the case of the written word, it's a very good thing.  For example, the majority of my college professors have required students to turn in hard copies of written assignments.  Printing my assignments is time-consuming, and costs 7 cents per page in the library.  And, if I discover I made a mistake, I have to re-print the entire assignment.  In contrast, my New Testament professor wants us to e-mail our assignments to him.  This is very easy, and I can do it from home if I want to.

However, I think that social interaction over the internet can't compete with face to face interaction yet.  Written messages have their place, and technology for videoconferencing is becoming more widespread, but it's not the same as actually being with someone.

By the way, I realized that I actually haven't fulfilled the requirements for my first class lab, so sometime soon I'll have to post detailed instructions on how to use Google Scholar.  I think it'll be a pretty boring post though, since most people could figure in out in about two minutes.  Oh well.

Scholar Searches on Humanism

Today I decided to try my first class lab.  I picked the one on learning about scholarly search engines.  I tried some searches, focusing on Humanism, because that's the focus of this assignment, and I was able to find many different books about the history of humanism.  One thing I like about searching databases with a scholarly emphasis is that I feel more confident that the writers I find know what they're talking about.  Also, large excerpts of the books often available to everyone, so it's possible to get the general idea of the book even if I don't have access to the whole thing.

However, in order to find extra reading material for my assignment, I ended up using Wikipedia as my main search tool.  Scholarly search websites try to bring people up-to-date articles about things, which is good, but I was looking for primary sources.  Through the help of Google and Wikipedia, I found out about an early humanist Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who later became Pope Pius II, and who wrote a treatise on education.  It turned out there was a book with that and other Humanist writings about education right in the school library, so I went there today and transferred it from the library shelves to my wonderful backpack.

Considering that Piccolomini/Pius II, lived in the 1400s, it's surprising how much I can identify and agree with him.  He talks about the need for rulers to have the best teachers possible, because no one without a good education will know how to make wise decisions.  As I read about this I thought about the educational system here in this country, and how, because we expect people to govern themselves, everyone should be educated enough to make wise decisions. I think that the real value of Humanism, both in the past and the present, is not the promotion of humanity itself, but the value it places on human learning.

Increasing Our Knowledge

Well, my classes are finally over for the week, and I think maybe it would be a good idea for me to actually comment on what I've learned relating to my Digital Civilization class in the past few days.  I wasn't really sure what to read in addition to the assigned readings, but I did find an online article by James A. Dewar, written a few years ago, that explained the rise of the information age by comparing it to the invention of the printing press.  I'll post the link on here as soon as I can figure out how.  (I really need this class, I guess.) 

There was one aspect of this article that was particularly interesting for me.  It explained that movable type was invented in China and Korea centuries before Gutenberg, but that neither of these countries could take full advantage of the invention because of their many characters.  As someone currently studying Chinese, I find it interesting that the Chinese still use characters rather than pinyin, although the characters are much more difficult to learn and use.  I can understand why they keep using the characters though, because my desire to learn a character based writing system was the reason I first became interested in Chinese.

However, although there's sometimes a lot of beauty and value in old ways of thinking, I agree with Dewar's point that the most successful countries will always be the ones who take full advantage of new methods.  Part of what made Utopia so great, according to the excerpt I read for class, was that the people were willing to use new knowledge the moment the obtained it.  I think this also applies to me as an individual.  I am surrounded by information, and whether or not I become successful in this changing world depends on whether I choose to take advantage of new methods of learning.

Aha!  I just posted a link.  It's down at the bottom of the page if anyone's interested.

Hello.  I am a college student with five classes this semester, some of which require very heavy books.  Last year, I dragged an enormous backpack all around campus for two semesters, so this year I decided to save energy and avoid visits to the chiropractor by investing in a wheeled backpack, hence the name of this blog.  So far, the backpack has definitely been worth it, and I encourage all students with heavy books to follow my example as soon as their backpacks wear out.

My reason for starting this blog is that it is a class requirement for my Honors 202 class.  This was surprising to me, because until this morning I thought the class was all about the history of literature since 1500.  It is, but it's also about using modern technology to connect and express ideas, and about drawing parallels between historical ideas and the development of technology in the present day.  Because I started the blog for this class, I expect it to become mostly filled with thoughts about great literature.  However, I don't want this to be just about my Honors class, but about my entire school experience.

So, finally I guess I'd better explain that right now my main path of education is divided.  I'm studying Math, and I plan to major in it, once I get around to declaring it formally.  I'm also studying Chinese, although I don't exactly know how far I want to go with that.  Between Chinese, Math, History, and learning how to blog, etc., I have a feeling I'm going to be very busy this semester, but I do plan to have a lot of fun along the way.