week 1 post 3

viruses of the mind
I have to admit that these readings are a bit hard to follow attimes. It's hard to stay interested when the articles are full ofcomplex words and thoughts. I'm not even sure if i'm grasping thefull concept or not. I dont know much about the technical side ofcomputers but i think i can see the point that the author is tryingto make.

He is comparing viruses such as the ones that travel throughcomputers to the mind of perhaps a young child. Viruses on a computercan make the computer do certain things that seem to have no reasonbehind them. For example, one day your entire hardrive may be deletedwithout any warning. The same way these viruses are implanted are,in a sense, the same way that young minds come to believe certainthings without actually knowing why. As adults, we implant certaininformation into children because we know they will just accept itand maybe it's easier for us to have them this way. But what we aredoing is programing our children to just take in any information ororders and accept them. We are not teaching our children to thinkabout the "hows" and "why's". Children are then growing up doing andthinking certain things because of the "viruses" that we havesubjected them to.

I thought is was clever the way the author went into full detailabout how viruses work and what they are capable of doing and thentaking a turn to the human mind. The way we think sometimes, seemslike something may be wrong with us. Maybe we've all been infectedwith viruses but they are hard to detect.