Bliss

"To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan—
The tender for another's pain,
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their Paradise.
No more;—where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise."

My seventh grade English teacher often quoted Thomas Gray's line from "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" by sarcastically suggesting that, "Ignorance is bliss." I didn't truly understand what he meant until I got a little older, but enrolling in LIS2600 certainly brought a new understanding to those three words. In two weeks I have such a new appreciation for technology. At times I wondered how long I would have been able to stay in the land of technological ignorance. Bliss has been quite appealing. Now, I believe I'm in the crisis stage of a huge paradigm shift in regards to my understanding of what "bliss" really is. The tools that I have used (blog, discussion board, coursecasts, webcasts, podcasts, rss feeds, etc.) would have put a huge damper on my idea of "bliss" before these two weeks of crisis. Now "bliss" is quite different to me. These tools have opened new worlds to me -- who would have known? Lighting the way to new possibilities..."Tis folly to be wise."