2010년 6월 29일 화요일

Shame and Forgetting in the Information Age

From the beginning, Charles Baxter uses the epigraph "We have transformed information into a form of garbage". I think it gives a clue to the readers what the author tries to say. As a garbage uses in a figurative way to represent information, he seems to worry losing values of information which is specially from an individual experience.

In the first part of the essay "Shame and Forgetting in the Information Age" he states about his brother who had a trouble in learning printed information. Although his brother lived in the information age, he could not learn from those information. The only way to learn was experiences to him. I think Tom might imply a person who lived before the information age.

In the second part of the essay, he explains getting information with confusion from data and own experience. With the development of society, increasing the amount of information causes 'information-inflation'. As a result, he indicates that exposure too much information brings the confusion of the value of information.

In the third part of the essay, Baxter states how forgetting and shame come together with comparing information and experience.

Information-glut causes the loss of information.
Likewise, autobiographers also cannot includes every memory and experience because there exists a time of data-glut in someone's memoir. In the forth part of the essay, he explains autobiographers and information age in the same way.

The purpose of this essay seems like to remind people of the importance of experience with living in the information age.


댓글 4개:

  1. Don,
    I like the way you broke down your interpretation of the essay. I agree with you comments about the essay. I think your last line about the purpose of the essay is what the author was trying to get across.

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  2. Hi Don,

    I think your essay was very well thought out. You made a good point about Baxter's use of the epigraph.

    Elise

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  3. Hi Don,

    I really liked when you said:
    "With the development of society, increasing the amount of information causes 'information-inflation'. As a result, he indicates that exposure too much information brings the confusion of the value of information."

    This is something I think I could have focused more of my essay on. I think that It's important to see how Baxter is showing how we are being overloaded with information and his is the cause for us to be pushing aside our memory of experiences.

    -Ariel

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  4. hi Don,

    i really think you broke down the essay really well. it was well put together and it help me to understand more of what baxter is trying to get across.

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