Reading and Writing in the 21st Century

Learning to read and write are two of the most fundamental skills in humans. That's basically what differentiates us from the other superior animals. Although if you listen to many people talking or reading, it seems as if they didn't alphabetize at all.
Those two basic skills have been suffering changes in response to the changing technology in today's world.

The internet meant a whole new way of communication with people as general public, consumers, students and laymen. Advertising campaigns had to be modified to fit the format of small space and quick seconds-long ads from any brand or product in order to be published and targeted to specific audiences.

As any emerging technology, the internet had a great impact in children, teenagers and young adults. It is not a surprise that advertising in the internet was not different from the tv major campaigns. Even though it was an uncertain year or in the nineties when the internet got popular, it has consiolidated as a completely new way of doing business and shopping. It's not necessary to be hooked up to QVC or any other shopping channel, you could access to any brand with a website at anytime, from any part of the world.

And then came the Web 2.0, a brand new way to generate information. Anybody can contribute and/or publish anything, from family events to professional education. These technologies also require a new set of skills and styles of presentation of information. Because we read and write in different ways nowadays. It is actually not bad to write a lot through a computer, because you have the capabilities of instantaneous editing and improvement, instead of drawing scratches over paper, and pretend to move words with arrows from one position to another. The cherry on top is the fact that we pollute less and we help saving our planet.

And these days you can also read with your ears, yes. Thanks to audiobooks and podcasting, you can take lots of information in a simple mp3 player anywhere with you. So, everytime you're riding a bus, train or airplane, don't waste your time, learn something new by e-writing and e-reading (via audio or visual publications).

Green thoughts, or so i thought - September 27th

I remember reading about serious green movements in the early 90's when I was coming out of my teenage years. It sounded as the right thing to do, but how much have we done ever since? Buty "we" I mean us, society, you, me and everybody else. Governments sign agreements, treaties, one less respected than others. As with any other world topic, it is subjected to politics but, in this case, mainly to economics. Yes because it is the money the ruler of any movement right or wrong trying to save our planet.

Our society and even the industry predicates the good manners to conserve our planet. Be sure that I started being very concerned when news kept coming about global warming, ice caps melting, icebergs breaking down, hurricanes increasing frequency and intensity, El Niño visiting us more often, etc.

All of this made me think, how are my two children going to live in this world. When they turn 25, the world's population will be around 9 billion people, and I'm sure the oil will still be driving the economy, but it will have a very strong competitor, water.

Yes, water shortage is a reality. and not a projection. Not in vane "Thirst" was the winner of the SlideShare annual contest, because it is something we are living, not something we're hypothesizing.

THIRST

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design crisis)