Today’s class was an attention grabber. I’m a Christian and talking about how God is a boundary-transgressing animal was interesting for me. I had very really thought about God is something that is both spirit and man which kinds of defies all the law of everything. Then talking about it on a nonspiritual level; lobsters, they walk/crawl around on the bottom of the water. Water is for the land of the swimming, however, lobsters transgress that boundary.

Then in terms of people, they are also known for being boundary transgressors. White people use to blacken their faces as a form of protest, so they would be transcending the boundaries of race. All of these can then be applied to the world of music. When you think of Country music you generally think about a white guy with a beard and a cowboy hat on. But today there are a handful of African American country music singers. One county music singer that I think of as being a boundary transgressor is Taylor Swift. She started off as a Country singer and now she is a pop singer. However, in the later years of her country carrier, you could start hearing some of those Pop elements in her songs.   This makes Taylor Swift a country singer in a Pop world; a transgressor of boundaries.

Which one is better being able to read and not have to memorize everything or memorizing everything and not being able to read? In my opinion, I feel like in today’s world I feel like you need a little of both. My question is how does the person who can’t read learn knowledge that has been writing down? Someone has to read that to them if it is something that very difficult to articulate. Yes, I see how memorizing everything and internalizing everything give you more knowledge and makes you wiser. However, in today’s society, we would not be able to function because of all the information that we have today it would be impossible to be able to memorize all those old and new ideas that are constantly changing. Also, with all the technology that we have in today’s world, we have access to knowledge in seconds which has stopped our need to memorize information.

Carr made a point in that technology and the internet have ceased the need for today’s world from having to remember things. A vast majority of the population is literate and Carr states in his novel that Socrates thought that being literacy specifically reading silently could cause one to have two selves; your physical body and then that person you are within your head. Socrates thought that this would be a dangerous thing, however, I think that in today’s world this internal self is something that can lead to new ways of thinking and aids in things like art and literature. It is a form of expression. So, yes we may have less time to memorize information with all the technology of today, but it is also the medium that we find most of the information that we come into contact with. But this also allows us to be able to learn so many more new things. In my opinion, having such easy access to knowledge allows anyone and everyone to be able to do almost anything they can think of, knowledge is no longer limited.

This class may not have been the most exciting in the world, but it brought up some interesting points. For instance the fact that today we are detached from the culture and traditions of the world that use to be so important. For example, talking about produce. I had never thought about the fact that back in the day people could only eat the foods that were in season. So, when produce started to be imported from other parts of the country with the invention of things like trains people started to be detached from the concept of season produce. Then Professor O’Malley brought up our changed perspective of time. Back in the day people told time by roosters and then that evolved into people telling time based on things like the time the bank would close. All of these were not finite and universal concepts of time because everyone told time based on different things. In today’s society, we have the luxury of having a standard measurement of time. This makes us first of all detached from the way of life from the path. Even though we see this as positive it also causes our busy lives to be controlled by this thing we call time, that isn’t even tangible.

We allow our lives to be controlled by time because that is just how it evolved and everyone is doing it and everyone expects us to use this standardized concept of time. In today’s day in age, everyone would think you were crazy if you said, ” Oh I’m not late I tell time based on when my mail comes.” When you think about it it’s crazy how time literally runs our lives and we let it because society expects us to. Do you think we, as a society, would be able to function if we went back in time and adopted the ways of nonstandard time?

Today’s class brought something to my attention that I had never realized before. When professor Omalley had us listen to some popular pop songs and the sounds that I heard was crazy. Today’s music has been compressed in a way that the volume does not change and there is no dynamic range that there use to be in the older sounds like jazz. Today’s music does not have the soft sections and louder sections like songs use to have that helped to engage the listeners and created more emotions in my opinion.

I enjoyed the arguments that everyone was bringing up in this class and found it very interesting because it’s just a concept that I had never thought about. I never really asked myself, why do I like this song? what about it grabs my attention? This class made me rethink the kind of music that I listen to. Because now I will be able to hear this in all the songs I listen to. But I still question why my brain still thinks that the music I’m listening to is getting louder. Is it just an illusion? Or is it something that our generation has just become accustomed to?