ENGL 680M: New Media

This Onion article is hysterical and relates to what we've been talking about. Read it and chuckle.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38850

We discussed in Friday’s class that many computer applications look like things we’d see in an office, like the old trash can icon or the new recycle bin icon, paper clip and clipboard icons, and the little disk that means save, even though hardly anyone saves on floppy disks anymore. Cat, I think, even mentioned that she can make her Word documents look like notebook paper if she wants. These familiar images are comforting.

McLuhan’s discussion of amateurism versus professionalism connects to a lot of stuff I’ve been thinking about academia lately. He writes that, “Professionalism is environmental. Amateurism is anti-environmental. Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the groundrules of society” (93). It seems, then, that to be a professional in something by definition means to cut yourself off from other areas of thought, practice, and of, well, life.