I am not hundred percent sure what I want to do yet for my portfolio. However, I want to focus more on how our society has turned more towards electronic version of books and how this effects the writers and writing. Also, I want to look into why certain authors will only publish their work one way either electronic or in a hard copy. Also, I would be interested to learn if either version of writing is more economically successful to authors. Since some electronic books are less expensive than hard copies, I want to look into whether or not that effects the authors income from the book.

I really enjoyed being able to view all of the pieces on Tuesday and see just how much books have changed from long ago. It really felt like I entered a museum when I walked into the room and saw all of the different ancient artifacts set up before me. One of the things that really left an impression on me was when I was told that the piece of paper I was holding was not really paper at all, but instead dead animal skin. I had been holding it in my hands for at least five minutes before being told this, but had yet to notice the tiny pores scattered throughout it. I think the fact that I had so quickly assumed it was paper I was holding shows how prominent paper is in today’s society.

I was thinking about the discussion regarding books becoming digitalized in the future when I began to wonder if this would truly be possible. After all, an era were to come where all books are digitalized, power outages would pose a much larger problem than they do today. Power outages are fairly common, as I imagine they will be for a long time to come. If books were only to be digitalized, then something as simple as the power going out for several days would pose a much larger problem than it does today. For this reason, I feel that books will never truly disappear from the public. Not only are they readable even in during times of technology crisis, but I feel they are really the only way to ensure that our knowledge will be passed down to future generations even in a post-apocalyptic world, where digital books would likely be impossible to access.

I am interested in how copyright plays a role in music and how the laws have changed and continue to change. I find it interesting that technology is causing to reevaluate copyright laws, so what does that mean for the future of copyright in our country? Is it possible to completely overhaul copyright law or should it be left the way people know it?

The presentation of the ancient texts we viewed on Tuesday was interesting and also enlightening.  It was amazing how texts that were so ancient were preserved, allowing for us to take a peek into the past.  This made me wonder, how will our generations ideas be seen in the future.  Now that all texts are inevitably going to be digital there will no longer be hard copies.  This means that there will most likely be limited or no hard copies for people thousands of the years in the future to view.  I am curious if going digital will preserve our ideas like the papyrus or scrolls we viewed.  On the other hand, our documents can be erased in a single click so it is possible that some or any of them may not be saved to seen by civilizations in the future.

Being a Government and Law major I am particularly interested in the laws that protect the ideas and inventions of individuals. I would like to learn more about how to formulate and make official copyrights, patents and any other similar documents that show proof of ownership. Furthermore, I would like to know the penalty for violating these copyrights and in general what the law has to say about such documents.  Copyrights and protecting ideas is such an important part of our society especially with new technology which makes the sharing of it effortless.  This new computerized age has called for the changing of laws to accommodate the evolving technology.  These laws are an aspect that I would like to explore during this class.

When looking at the older materials in class on tuesday I began to think about the impact of ebooks on the future of reading. I do not believe this will happen in the near future, but how would items such as the kindle be preserved if society transitioned to a purely electronic means of reading. Technology is constantly evolving and if as a society we were to transition to electronic books would some works be lost in the future due to an inability to access the ebook?