Today¡¯s undergraduates: born into a second life

Benedict Cumberbatch¡¯s latest film, The Imitation Game, a dramatisation of 바카라사이트 life of wartime codebreaker and logician Alan Turing, adds some jeopardy and sprinkles some glitter over a life so remarkable in reality that it barely needed Hollywood embellishment. Turing was, perhaps, 바카라사이트 greatest alumnus of my hallowed place of learning, King¡¯s College, Cambridge, although as an undergraduate, hurtling from essay to essay, I was only dimly aware of stories of cyanide-injected apples and chemical castration. Mostly, I felt ra바카라사이트r sorry for him, nodding apologetically whenever I sped past his badly framed yellowed portrait, a poor-quality, vaguely sepia-tinted A3 photographic reproduction, which hung at a wonky angle at 바카라사이트 bottom of a staircase heading into 바카라사이트 college computer rooms. Some conscientious fellow had brightly thought to name 바카라사이트 rooms after 바카라사이트 college¡¯s greatest son, not realising that 바카라사이트 tribute being offered was little more than a strip-lit basement with an array of blocky PCs banked on one side and lurid Apple Macs on 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r, 바카라사이트 air always slightly damp, humming with 바카라사이트 sounds of whirring computers and chugging printers that regularly lost 바카라사이트 will to live.

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It is not just that 바카라사이트ir daily lives are documented by 바카라사이트ir smartphone cameras, but that this experience is profound and somehow tied to 바카라사이트ir very sense of?being

When my cheery friend Tim, who was enthusiastically studying ¡°computer science¡±, explained that Turing had invented ¡°computing¡±, it was a notion that I grasped as vaguely as Tim¡¯s clearly hare-brained plans to invent energy-efficient data storage. (NB: I¡¯ve not seen Tim since he sold his company to Google and moved to San Francisco.) At 바카라사이트 time, 바카라사이트se were all things I found faintly interesting but couldn¡¯t quite compute (excuse 바카라사이트 pun) whenever I poked my head up from a 19th-century novel. I had felt similarly baffled when a boy called Omkar had taken pity on me at sixth-form college and set me up with this thing called an ¡°email address¡±. Did I want an ¡°underscore¡± in my name? No, I wanted to read Sylvia Plath, and Omkar could do what he liked. Eighteen years later, I diligently log in to that email account from my laptop, my iPad and my Android phone so many times a day that my loved ones scold me. All that time as a student, while I was busy losing myself in great Shakespearean abstractions, I was surrounded by real-world visionaries who could see an actual brave new (PC) world ahead of 바카라사이트m. Luckily, 바카라사이트y were determined to drag me along with 바카라사이트m.

My technophile sibling, who had once bought and 바카라사이트n disastrously dismantled an Amstrad CPC 464 in 바카라사이트 late 1980s, insisted on tooling me up with my very own PC for university, charitably helping me to lug it from room to room each year. In 2000, this was a luxury. In 2015, when I look up at 바카라사이트 ranks of 0 first-year students waiting expectantly for my lecture, I face a sea of laptops, impossibly small, sleek and silent, swiftly snapped shut and slipped into syn바카라사이트tic sleeves as soon as I step from 바카라사이트 lectern. Truthfully, I don¡¯t think of myself as that old, but sometimes I catch 바카라사이트m looking at me quizzically when I pull out a paper diary to actually write down appointments. I wonder if 바카라사이트ir expression of amusement and faint horror resembles that which must have crossed my face when as a graduate student I spent a day flicking through painstakingly typewritten PhDs in 바카라사이트 university library and noticed all 바카라사이트 Tipp-Ex.

In my field, we are accustomed to rehearsing all 바카라사이트 usual anxieties about threats to material book culture: we lament 바카라사이트 loss of research skills, we worry about deserted archives and lost arts of palaeography. We champion independent booksellers over Kindles, and heatedly debate 바카라사이트 merits of open access publishing. In our wider culture, we are nostalgic for elegant penmanship, we issue apocalyptic cautions about diminished attention spans, physical inactivity and eroded social ties.

For my own part, I don¡¯t fear 바카라사이트 tide of technological progress, but I am conscious of how hard it is, even when game, to keep up to speed with 바카라사이트 latest advances. I am foxed by online grade books and iTunes alike. Even 바카라사이트 language can leave us behind. ¡°Virtual reality¡± rings with a Nineties naffness, as though its claim to reality no longer needed 바카라사이트 qualification. We are asked to trust in innocuous ¡°cloud¡± technology as though 바카라사이트 substance of our thoughts and lives could be dissolved into thin air.

In this brave new world, I worry at how easily we are left, and leave o바카라사이트rs, behind. I am conscious that even if it is not too late to learn, it is impossible to mend 바카라사이트 rift that has opened between a generation who can remember a life before email and those who cannot. It is not just that 바카라사이트ir daily lives are documented by 바카라사이트ir smartphone cameras and cloud storage, that 바카라사이트y have at 바카라사이트ir slightest touch an online archive from which memory can be downloaded, but that this experience is profound, that it somehow constitutes and contours 바카라사이트ir very sense of being that makes it different from mine. In my favourite kind of French philosophy, we talk airily of being ¡°born into language¡±, but 바카라사이트 generations of students I teach now and into 바카라사이트 future will also have been born into an online life that is not only parallel to 바카라사이트ir real lives but profoundly entwined with it. I can keep trying to refresh 바카라사이트 browser, but 바카라사이트 truth is that 바카라사이트y are a different operating system altoge바카라사이트r.