Do computers get in the way of significant intellectual work? Theodore Roszak believes so. In this month's Opinion he argues that "all the greatest thoughts were thought before computers." Lesson No. 1 in computer literacy, he says, is that "the computer contributes nothing essential to the life of the mind". Do you agree?
Is there any chance, I wonder, that we might prevail on the movie
industry
to change its rating for "Shakespeare in Love" from R to G? I'd be
willing to
risk whatever harm a few flashes of Gwyneth Paltrow's breasts might do to
our
children in exchange for the contribution the film makes to computer
literacy.
Yes, I know there are no computers in the movie.
That's the point. As brazenly anachronistic as the film is about
Elizabethan
life and times, it is reasonably accurate in the few brief scenes that
stuck
with me.
Shakespeare at work doing what history most remembers him for.
Not bedding fair ladies, but writing. And with what? A tattered feather
dipped in liquefied carbon.
We see the playwright softening the tip, cutting it at just the right
angle,
stopping to sharpen it again and again, then casting it aside when it
grows
too mushy and reaching for another.
A friend who has experimented with quills tells me that goose feathers
provide more durability than those plucked from a duck or chicken, but
even
the best goose quill will not last longer than a few pages.
And the result? With all the skill in the world, by the time one
finishes
crossing out and revising, the page has turned into a semilegible chaos
of
India ink and needs to be recopied.
Yet that is how "Romeo and Juliet" was written.
And "Hamlet" and "King Lear." All were laboriously scribbled into
existence
by an inspired poet who cared above all for the depth, eloquence and
intellectual force of his work and got right down to it.
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