Essay On Music Aficionados

In the development of the minds of the future, technology is often promoted as the key to success. Yet merely throwing technology at students cannot guarantee learning. Technology can both harm and help minds, and much of the “cool consumer worldview” and academic awkwardness among students (especially in developed nations or/and from privileged family background) today is a result of technology gone awry.

Few observers of American life, including its intellectual and technological life, are as keen as Bill Watterson. Calvin is sophisticated enough to complain about how his “centering, self-actualizing anima has been impacted by toxic, co-dependent dysfunctionality,” yet immature enough to be stunned upon learning that teachers do not “sleep

The questions intellectuals answer rarely have a simple, single answer, but technology typically provides users with easy answers, even when the questions appear difficult. The music aficionados from a century ago put substantially more effort into listening to Chopin’s “Preludes”—whether that effort entailed learning the music or finding someone to perform it—than their modern counterparts do. It is not intrinsically wrong for information that was previously obscure to be readily available. However, today’s students are now used to everything moving rapidly, from instant messages to cell phones, and it is no longer their habit to wait for anything to come to them, even understanding. The ease with which information is now attained has made many students disinclined to put in the hard work needed to deal with the absurdities of

Bill Watterson seems to think so. The cool consumer attitude Calvin has adopted has been caused, in part, by the way he does things, and the wave of technological advances sweeping over American students cannot help but have a similar effect. Technology’s prevalence in American life cannot help but change the way it thinks, and it appears that many of these changes have been for the worse. The greatest symptom of consumer attitudes and perceived academic absurdity in the academy is the declining status of the book. Students still read, of course, but they rarely let a book consume them. Their passion rests in music, video games, television shows, movies, and websites. Calvin defends his anathema for books to Hobbes by claiming, “It’s not entertainment unless you can sit in the dark and eat”. To respond to the nascent coolness and disdain for academic absurdities present in college students, textbook writers and publishers have made books look more like television. A casual reading of the average textbook reveals attractive printing, colorful pictures, tons of organizational features to point out critical areas of the text, links to concurrent websites, and, occasionally, a CD-ROM. It is interesting to compare these modern textbooks to some of the textbooks I used in school. These books were printed in an archaic, typewriter-like font, with a few grainy black-and-white photographs, and a sparse