Monday, February 24, 2020

Meandering Thoughts: Day 1 - The Romance of Pen and Paper

There used to be a melody to writing back in those days, when writing either meant angry rants about the latest issues or simple "a-b-a-b" scheme poetry addressing teenage love. Just something about putting pen to paper and letting it flow, scratching out a few words here, tacking on a few embellishments there.

Now? Now I can't remember the last time I wrote down anything of substance, except maybe instructions from seniors in office, because otherwise, just like the rest of my attention deficit generation, I'll forget at least some part of what I was told within minutes of hearing it. What's more, it's all digital now. Either I'm typing away on my laptop or swype-ing 56 words a minute on my phone. No more is there the meticulous search for the right stationery, wondering what the right spelling of a particularly tricky word is before looking it up in the dictionary, just to be doubly sure. The romance of writing is gone.

But is it just me, or has technology really made it easier to write, but more difficult to express? Call it the arrogance of youth or perhaps just limited awareness of differing views, but I used to be more opinionated as a high schooler than I am now. Now that we have more and more information about every possible topic with no concrete way to verify the truth of the matter, I find it increasingly harder to pick sides in debates. It's not black and white like we were taught in moral science classes - it's all just grey and greyer.

PS. I quickly Googled 'greyer' in parallel to double-check if this is an actual word - some things haven't changed as much as I thought after all.

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