Is technology help increase the sell of books?

How many of you read first the book and then saw it on the big screen? I believe that there are many who did it and there is the same amount of people or more who just went in a straight line to watch it on the screen.

As we look at the literature world, we come to the very simples conclusion that today book’s authors are in the better situation than those who lived a hundreds years ago. They have advantage over them because of the technology which allows today make movie based on the story with celebrities and at the same time help become famous novelist and increase sell of his/her books. In another words, in the result of technology that we have now, many today’s book writers won’t die unknown like those who lived several decades ago.

I am assuming that many of you have seen the movie “Their Eyes Were Watching God” but how many of us knew this book and its author before it came on the screen- I suppose that not many of us.

As Susan Hodara wrote in her article “Twenty-Five Reasons to Turn Off the TV” the author of “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Hurston was the black writer who “died …in 1960 [and] was buried in an unmarked grave” never never actually during her live time was properly recognized. Finally, few years after “in 1973, the writer Alice Walker resolved to locate Hurston’s grave” and later publish her biography written by Rober E. Hemenway. This gave her work short fame which she never got during the life. People started to recognized Hurston and her work “which includes four novels, and autobiography, short stories, plays, essays, articles and to collection of folklore.”

However, the greatest interest her person and work got in 2005, when Oprah Winfrey financed the production of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and Halle Berry a famous actress took the first plan role. By this movie her person right now is well known and her book today is the part of college curriculum. And according to many “this is compelling book that will touch communities all over the county” – I read it and saw the movie; and need to agree that the story is amazing, touching and push us to think about our lives now.

Hurston history is a good example that technology helps book writers. Sometimes people need to first see the movie that is based on the book and if it looks interesting on the screen many will go and buy the book.

Are we mice or what?

Is exam that measures students’ critical ability an answer for today’s technologically advanced world? This is a question, which came up in my head after I read the article “Measuring Literacy in a World Gone Digital” written by Ton Zeller Jr. (The New York Times, January 17, 2005). Generally the whole article talks about the new exam that is created in order to measures students’ critical ability. The author of the text said “the Information and Communications Technology literacy assessment, which will be introduces at about dozen colleges and universities,…is intended to measure students’ ability to manage…,sort e-mail messages or manipulate tables and charts, and to assess how well they organize and intend information from many sources and in myriad forms. About 10,000 undergraduates at school from University of California, Los Angeles to Bronx Community College are expected to take the test [no later than] March 31.”

At the start I need to agree with Robert B. Reich (the secretary of labor department of the Clinton administration) who said “critical thinking is a central aspect of the new economy.” In today’s world where economy in fact is in great extent impacted by technology, people are required and forced to know how to work with computers and other available right now devices on the market. How much we make today also is impacted by technology, without it, now we can’t function properly, we can’t be even a valuable citizen of this world.

However, anyone please tell me how long more we will be perceived as those libratory mice that are used there for experiments. In some way I believe that this will continue forever, therefore, since computers came on the first place and world goes through so called “information literacy movement”, we –people made of bones and blood- don’t have any other option but only follow current trend.

Furthermore, the author of an article gives us a visual description how will the exam look like. He wrote that students in the first part of the test “would be asked to consider the various sources and suggestion, and to rank them by relevance to the original request.” On contrast the “other parts of the test ask students to do everything … [such as] sorting e-mail messages into appropriate folders…’reordering a table to maximize efficiency.” This whole idea, how is going to look the exam that calculates one’s critical ability it is completely outrageous. Please, explain to me, how we can estimate someone’s critical skills by sorting e-mails. To me this exam would measure person’s technological knowledge instead of critical awareness.

gaps II

How many of you was late with a project or didn’t meet dead lines. I am assuming that this have had happened at least ones in your life time. All this take place because nowadays everything goes so fast that people have difficulties to keep up with assignments, work etc. Many of us in most of the time scarify the private life, in order to have job done. However, how long we can run our life this way—surely not long. That’s why some sociologists, psychologists to help people deal with every day life, came out with the idea called “time management”. According to them, time management is the schedule of ours activities during a week, month or year that is made in order to become productive student, employee etc., and is easy to follow because we are the ones who write the plan. Yes, time management in some way might be very helpful for us, but is it easy to write and follow? Not exactly (here I am talking about myself). Every time when I sit down and try to write my schedule for oncoming week –I am getting crazy and upset. I realized that creating my graphic is not so easy for me because every time I got lost when it comes to decide about some spare time for myself. Moreover, afterwards I am all the time finding that didn’t work because there is always something that comes unforeseen during the week.