The internet comes for your books and children!

A humble rant, perhaps some actual story-writing in the coming days.

I find that when confronted with someone that takes what is meant to be enjoyable recreation to an extreme, I almost immediately become an asshole. Not too overtly so, but just enough that in retrospect I can see how I was being a jerk. My key example for the evening is the four or so hours I spent playing SSBB(That would be Super Smash Brother's Brawl, for those unaware) this evening. All was fun and games until a particular person arrived who brought with him an air of both superiority and seriousness.
Now, don't get me wrong, I can take some things more seriously than others, and not all of them are intense, professional, life oriented things. But before this person arrived, most of the amazing moments in the game were punctuated by one or more people going "What the fuck? That was awesome! What was that!?". The first time such phrase was voiced in his presence, he answered with "That was back-B". An uncomfortable silence followed, underlining the discomfort and abrupt departure of the jovial atmosphere that had previously existed. This kind of attitude finds its way into some of the classes I take as well. Especially in the larger classes, I'm sure anyone with slight experience in college will remember the one student who not only knew the answers to all the questions the professor asked, but would take it upon himself to expand upon said question so that the rest of the class could leave that day without a doubt that they had witnessed the display of his intellect.

Which leads me into a second thing that has been bothering me. I've noticed, not so much in my classes but in classes that either friends or my brother are taking, where professors specify the negligible value of internet resources. This is not to say they advise against it; my brother's philosophy course has specifically said that they are not to employ the internet at all. To me this is somewhat horrifying, not because of my unrelenting dependency on the interwebs to provide me with all forms of stimulation i so desire, but because it appears that these professors either resent the internet's simply access to knowledge, or believe that all knowledge contained online can only lead to in depth scientific papers eventually looking like this:

This strikes me largely as the 21st century version of the "When I was your age I had to walk 15 miles in the snow to get to school."
"Dad, I know you had cars back then. In fact, i've seen the pictures of you and dad with the old truck"
"Well, yes but I had to siphon the gas myself from the neighbor's car, and they had a dog. A big...mean dog."
...Anyway, to me the internet represents potential access to all kinds of information. Sure, you shouldn't quote Wikipedia for your essay, but my experience has revealed that the sources at the bottom of many pages are very useful, especially for semi-current topics. I feel somew
hat like these teachers are afraid of change; that or they think that if one is not forced to search through hundreds of pages of texts in the style of a gold-shifter, the student has clearly not earned the right to view such knowledge.

The towers of those who hold our knowledge close to their chest, these "libraries", tremble in fear, though with time they will come to realize that the information they secret away in hard copies will serve a greater purpose when I do not need to drive ten minutes to search through the pages.

I almost feel obligated at this point to reinforce my dear love for the physical medium of literature, but only so much as to say this: I love reading books; I do not love pawing thru them for an hour trying to find an entire quote when I know it starts with "And then I leapt into the..." and all I have to do on my computer is hold the ctrl key and press f to search for it.

Alcohol made this meaningful, too little made it less than entertaining; I apologize.