plagiarize this!

am thinking today about creativity per the radio west show i listened to yesterday arguing that we are, as a culture, becoming less and less creative. this came to me in combination with a ny times article about plagiarism and the internet and a recent foray into richard louv's 'last child in the woods.' what comes to me after experiencing these pieces touch upon three things 1) loss of creativity and imagination, 2) the impact of digital media on our culture, and 3) the question of how to foster important life skills while honoring technological advances.

if you are reading this you have in some way bought in to the immediate, accessible, intangible world of the internet. i know that i use the web on a daily basis to look for jobs, connect with friends, read the news, and research things. there are times when i find myself feeling a NEED for that access. instead of playing my guitar, working in my garden, walking my dog, i fold myself into this safe digital 'space' happily. i build virtual relationships (there are people 'in' my life i have not spoken to directly in years), read news as it come to me (often without depth of content), send my own thoughts into cyberspace (if you can call it a space), and even build a little frontier village complete with digital animals, crops and a family.

i can see how virtual reality cuts into my actual reality (thank you jonathan larson), and i try to be conscious of that fact. i don't think that is so much the case for the millennial generation. my younger cousins don't recall a time when mail did not come on a screen and where 'chatting' included a keyboard. if that is the way life is why would one divide their consciousness like i try to? kids don't play in the woods, learn the art of meaningful conversation, or understand how to verify facts. i can see why plagiarism has become fuzzy around the edges - our own reality has been ever so slightly drawn out of focus. if reality is not always 'real,' how can facts be?

there was a lovely editorial written about that ny times article arguing that if professors were to make paper-writing a process rather than an assignment they might have less cheating and more learning. i completely agree, and would take it farther to include the rest of life as well. there are so mant other places in life where we are no longer involved in process. food needs only a couple of buttons pressed to eat ('processed' replaces 'process'), conversations are reduced to 'gtg' or 'rofl' on keypads, and we all travel around in our cars, windows closed to the weather. if we all make a greater effort to get our hands dirty we might not see such a decline in creativity in schoolchildren.

i don't advocate the removal of digital technology from our lives. i love being able to call my friends at a moment's notice, write blog articles, read the paper without having to change the delivery address each time i move, and find recipes at the drop of a hat. however i do hope that people can come up with a way to maintain our actual reality and avoid getting lost in the virtual. the connection we can get with ourselves, others, and our planet is worth the effort!

now, if you will excuse me, i need to go back to reality.