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Crippling effect of technology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 25 of 36 14 October 2011 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Technology can be very effective in allowing us to create rather quickly what might previously have taken an eternity: some musical or cinematographic projects that would otherwise have taken months can now be completed in a matter of hours. With languages, Internet has opened up a wide array of new possibilities.
However, we don't tend to use computer or technology to create without intent. People who are versed in the arts may disagree with that statement, but essentially, we don't use the computer to doodle, to whistle an improvized melody, or to do an on-the-spot play on words. I think this type of instant, apparently purposeless, creativity is an important part of learning -- at the very least, I feel that creativity plays a large role in my own language acquisition, a role that technology doesn't allow me to fill easily. If I come across a new word, I want to play with it. I want to twist it around and see what it will allow me to do. I want to say it in different ways until I find the boundaries and get it just about right. In essence, I want to test out how much creativity I can get out of the word (or grammatical unit, etc.). Maybe that's what doesn't work with SRS for me: I'm not allowed any spontaneity and I can't create. There's a word, and there are buttons, I have to think to see if I got the word, and click on the right button. And a new word comes up. The process is too void of creativity for me to feel it worthwhile. Whether creativity is an important part of language acquisition or not may simply be a matter of personal make-up rather than age. Edited by Arekkusu on 14 October 2011 at 9:57pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5345 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 26 of 36 15 October 2011 at 1:58am | IP Logged | ||
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The more I think about it, the more I fear these despicable electronic gadgets that purport to replace books. What point would there be in learning foreign languages if the books you wish to read are region-locked like DVDs, video games and online music and video services? The only thing allowing me to work on the spoken form of the languages I study is piracy.
And that is leaving aside all the other evils of ebooks like ramshackle editions, incompatibility issues and accelerated obsoleteness. Really, anyone with dos dedos de frente* should refuse and resist this garbage that ebooks are. * any degree of intelligence 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dongsen Newbie Taiwan Joined 4809 days ago 30 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English | Message 27 of 36 15 October 2011 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Technology such as software and gadgets are merely tools that can facilitate tasks. They are inherently
neither good or bad. They are just tools, you choose to use them how you wish. Just as non electronic tools they can be used in productive or non productive ways. There is no doubt that some technology can rapidly aide learning when used correctly. That does not mean more traditional tools such as pen and paper are not useful They are all just tools. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5696 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 28 of 36 15 October 2011 at 8:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes DRM is bad, but it's also very easily circumvented. It always has been and always
will be. So I can't really understand going from that to ebooks are evil. I love my ebook device, I can take a ridiculous amount of material with me everywhere and can change books on a whim. Don't get me wrong I love ink and paper as well, but there are some definite practical advantages with ebooks. I can't help but be reminded of the opposition of monks to the printing press, where they argued that printed books were bad because they weren't as durable as velum, and that they were aesthetically ugly (due to the early crudeness of type), and most importantly that it would cheapen the experience of laboriously copying expensive codices and people would no longer appreciate the written word. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5345 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 29 of 36 15 October 2011 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||
You have it backwards. Going from real books to electronic ones is like regressing from the printing press to manuscript copies. To begin with, ebooks limit access to new titles on a geographical basis, making knowledge more fragmented and less universal and accessible than ever before. In order to access the full range of titles in each separate region and language you would have to create multiple accounts - which is not permitted. And no, circumventing regional locking is anything but trivial. Regarding their streaming video service for example, Amazon demands that you have a U.S. billing address in order to access it. Do you think this is easy for foreigners to procure? There are lengthy threads in Colombian forums devoted to discussing the means of personally ordering from United States stores like Newegg that do not accept credit cards issued in my country - yet no solution has been arrived at. In its effects the kindle and its ilk ominously portend a new apartheid on a global scale. Book reproduction also becomes dramatically less accurate, with quality editions being replaced by makeshift ones replete of typos, errors and omissions. While browsing for real books at Amazon I have often encountered reviews of kindle versions of mathematics, economics and all sorts of technical and advanced subjects, even language-learning books, that complain of missing charts, tables and footnotes, screwed up formulas, and downright unreadable editions. I once even saw a review of a novel where the name of the main character was misspelled all throughout the book! As for the classics and out of copyright books, quality editions from trustworthy publishers carefully and lovingly prepared by expert scholars are replaced by "volunteer" versions hastily transcribed and put together in a ramshackle manner reminiscent of a monk working by himself a thousand years ago. Or they are created by automated processes from which the influence of anything human is excluded, producing monstrosities such as this. Then there is the issue of compatibility and longevity. Will your ebooks be worth anything or even be at all usable thirty years from now? Finally, there is the matter of aesthetics, which I won't even bother to articulate. If ebooks ever become established, they will take humanity back five centuries in terms of the universal accessibility and quality of knowledge. My only hope is that while MP3s have ravaged the music industry for a far longer period, you can still obtain pretty much anything in CD format. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dongsen Newbie Taiwan Joined 4809 days ago 30 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English | Message 30 of 36 16 October 2011 at 1:20am | IP Logged | ||
There is no problem with e-readers, the problem is with commercial publishing interests, which are of course diametrically opposed to improving human knowledge. Thankfully all the information useful to mankind is starting to become free or is already free, ie Australia has recently passed a law that all research that is funded by the public can not be restricted, it must be freely available to everyone. If only US research was treated the same way. The problem with ebooks is not ebooks the tool, but the "business people" behind the technology. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5696 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 31 of 36 16 October 2011 at 8:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Juan:
Thank you for sharing your difficulties in circumventing region locking. I admit that I probably don't understand fully the difficulties that others have with this. But I must still disagree with some of the points you raised. Since we are discussing ebooks I will ignore the issue of streaming videos and purchasing electronics. You seem to have four main complaints: 1. Ebooks are subject to region locking. 2. Ebooks results in "dramatically less accurate" products. 3. Many public domain materials are volunteer or algorithmically published and are embarrassingly bad. 4. They are ugly. I hope I have been fair in my description. In regards to #1, I still maintain that this isn't really a problem, especially for text. Practically every ebook that you buy can also be found in a drm-broken version on the internet in a standardized and open format. There's no reason to expect that this will change anytime soon. As for #2, I argue that there is no reason that ebooks have to be less accurate. That they sometimes are missing charts and figures is because they are still relatively new and are often adapted from existing dead-tree versions. Once they have a larger market share, publishers will take better care with the process or just generate them directly as I'm sure most new ebooks are made now. There is nothing intrinsically less accurate about ebooks. #3 Most of these horribly bad editions are just people trying to make a quick buck by automatically generating these free books and selling them for money. Chances are almost no one will buy them, but the few that do make it worthwhile. I don't see how this affects anything, if you ignore them it's like they don't exist. As for the volunteer transcriptions, much material would not be available without the efforts of these volunteers (were it easily available then they wouldn't be doing it in the first place). They are making information more available, not less. I'm baffled that anyone would take umbrage with that. #4 Not that the two issues are completely orthogonal, but for actual use I hold practicality to be the more important issue—I can always go to a museum to get my fill of aesthetics. Edited by egill on 16 October 2011 at 8:47am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5345 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 32 of 36 16 October 2011 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Besides all other objections, this issue of regional locking is truly terrifying. What you are suggesting is that scholars and thinking men and women around the world be dependent upon warez and piracy to access their material, most of which, besides popular works and bestsellers, will never even be available in pirated form. The books you'll have access to will be reduced to the minimum common denominator of mass popular appeal, with everything else locked away beyond your reach. Your claim that everything available in the kindle store can be found DRM-free elsewhere is preposterous. The result of the establishment of ebooks will be a new era of exclusion enforced by a battery of digital iron curtains, where a person will be forbidden from having meaningful contact with other cultures above and beyond what either an ignorant hacker or the new dictators in suits and ties deem fitting and appropriate. There will be little point in learning foreign languages in this brave new world. Already people are being excluded from the French and German kindle stores as you can see here. If paper books were not available, why learn French and German? So that I can access a trickle of bestsellers? 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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