Heading into Uncharted Territory

In many of the discussions in class, on google+, and even in the ebook from the class before, we have brought up the fact that we are still learning how to handle all of the changes brought on by the 'new' digital age. And now that technology has made it so easy to change everything so quickly, maybe that continual state of adjustment won't go away. And we all know, that continually learning and being challenged...is never a bad thing. We like being pushed out of comfort zones because that equals progress, the American dream.

Like the ebook's discussion of "literacy being radically redefined" suggests, we are often uncomfortable (or rather in a more positive tone, we are unsure what to do) about how many parts of our lives are being redefined. As the internet changes the way we interact, it radically redefines every part of our lives, even creating a new culture. We are continually trying to figure out how we should react. We try to place old rules on the many new elements introduced by the internet. We often try to input our old social rules into the new system, because obviously we don't know how to handle all of this new uncharted territory.

In Dave Eggers memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a seemingly unrelated novel, I came across an interesting stream of thought that relates to placing old rules over a new system. I'm not sure where this will go as of now, since I'm only half way through the book. But I'm getting excited about the stream of thought that I am finding throughout the book, so far.

I'm reading this book for my creative nonfiction class, which makes the story even more shocking because it is true. At least most of it should be true. The story starts of with Eggers parents both dying within a few weeks of each other. His mother dies of stomach cancer, and while she is in the process of dying (the doctors have gone so far as to remove her stomach to get rid of the cancer, she lives each day in a lot of pain) his father dies of--I'm guessing--lung cancer. He then spends the rest of the novel (at least up to the point where I am), telling his story about raising his little brother, who was eight when his parents passed away.

Anyway, in this new system in which they are living, Eggers tries to reject the old mold claiming "we are the new model" by making his own rules. He constantly reads to his brother to make him smart. They never clean their house, it's filthy. He cooks dinner with his brother, because he feels he still needs to maintain a system. The food sounds disgusting and bland. He glares at the soccer moms and grumbles to himself about not caring because he is the "new model." But, his younger brother later observes that Eggers still holds onto many of the pieces of the structure of their old life. And they have to learn how to handle this new change, while still using parts of the old system. There is a lot of beautiful language, that I will share later, that shares these experiences better than I have just done. I'm excited to see where this thread of thought goes.