'u r dumb, I can haz Nobel'
From Doris Lessing's Nobel prize acceptance speech:
We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.
And all of this because of 'the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities'.
Please note that Lessing was too old and ill to make the speech herself and instead had someone else read it out.
Ok, first of all, respect. The woman has a body of work and has achieved what can be considered the highest recognition in literature.
Secondly, that's where I come from too. Absolutely gaga about books since I was four, I was given the fantastic opportunity to choose to study literature.
But hey Doris darling, that's the way the world goes. I was not too happy myself when, in the early Nineties, I found out that my pride and joy, the degree I had moved to London for and worked my butt off to get a first and a distinction, was on the job market just as valuable as a weekend crash course in macrame.
I reinvented myself, never stopped learning new stuff, made a pact with the Evil Internet Overlord to feed my intrinsic curiosity and I now work very happily in software development. And as soon as I can afford it, I am going to enrol in a part-time BSc in computer science.
Never, ever look back, no matter how golden the past may seem to you. Chances are you are idealising it anyway.
Besides, OMG teh title of this post is just 2 funny LOL (by the way, credit goes to whoever captioned the image that illustrates this Techcrunch article on Lessing's lecture).
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