This is a quick post to share a few fun links.
First, I am thoroughly enjoying participating in Kelsey Ketch’s “Create a Scene Tuesday” series. Yesterday got away from me before I could play, so I’ll be adding my scene for this week, which is a back-to-school theme, today. Please join me there!
Second, if you have a college-age child, are a teacher, write about young adults, or just want a sense of where the class of 2014 is coming from (does anyone use that phrase anymore?), you will enjoy the annual “Mindset List” put out by Beloit College. Here are the first ten of 75 “cultural touchstones” for the “post-email generation”:
The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”
4. Al Gore has always been animated.
5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.
Finally, following up on the genre fiction post from yesterday, I found this hilarious Onion piece, written, as my son tells me, in classic William Gibson style:
LINCOLNWOOD, IL—It’s Tuesday morning and Michael Royce, 27, is about to begin his day. Steeling himself for the wild journey ahead, this bold techno-traveler coolly presses a button, boots up his mainframe, and jacks into a strange, high-tech futurescape.
For Royce inhabits a sci-fi universe where his every transaction and correspondence occurs at lightning speed across the vast electronic data-stream known as “cyberspace.”
“I usually check a couple news sites first thing in the morning,” Royce says as he instantaneously uplinks current events from across the globe on his brightly illuminated view-screen. “CNN.com and Huffington Post are pretty good.” Read the full article.
Later today I’ll post my writing habit update, after I’ve had a chance to clean up and organize some emails (I’m still a member of the email generation, alas!).