Sharing Articles

When I was a kid, one of my aunts used to send clippings of newspaper or magazine articles that she found interesting. I don’t remember any of those clippings (maybe I was too young or maybe the topic didn’t interest me), but it got me thinking on how easy it is to share articles that you like today.

You can send it via e-mail. Or you could put a link to that article on Facebook or Twitter. You can even recommend an article to people you don’t even know with recommendation sites like Digg and Delicious.

I remember reading this very amusing article on the wicked character in Indian soaps recently. I read it at office; so obviously, I couldn’t cut out the article. Solution? Google for the article, copy/paste it and send it to whoever I wanted.

Of course, the downside of all this is that we can broadcast every article we like. Which may feel like spam to the receiver (I am pretty sure I am guilty on that front). Unlike the old days when people sent the article by snail mail. Which cost money. And they had only one copy to send anyway.

But hey, give me the technology any day. It does far more good than harm when it comes to sharing articles.

Comments

  1. KumarOctober 9, 2010 at 9:35 AM

    More than other points, that one point you made seems to make good sense to me: "broadcast of every piece that people like feels like spam". I know for sure it does. Many people may find it disappointing but I actually ignore most of the forwards that I receive (often delete without reading!) and some other forwards I do read not because I really wish to learn anything from the article but because I don't feel like ignoring the person who means something to me.

    At one stage in life I realized that there are gradations of this kind: figures, data, information, knowledge, wisdom. No matter how much an external porter of 'figures, data, information' can bring in, it is finally the person's internals that can work at the higher levels namely 'knowledge and wisdom'.

    What I mean is simply this: machines can never, never beat man to it. They are but servants. And, they can be good servants as long as we train ourselves to be good masters. Sometimes we lose sight of our own potential and strength due to the machine age, but the maya of the machines is truly mighty!

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