But it is a tool, and this should not be forgotten; something to be manipulated as much (and perhaps as easily) as our fingers. The new technologies are not created with the intention of replacing and atrophying what abilities we have, but adding to them and working in conjunction with them.
Certainly, there is a sort of initial, overwhelming enchantment that must be overcome--even now, my attention is pulled to other tabs on my browser, other websites (I have Charlie Brown's The Great Pumpkin playing in the background), things that feed images and media into me and tempt me into passivity; it is easier to consume than to create, after all. As someone who cooks incredibly slow, and takes around two or three hours to prepare a good meal, I can certainly vouch for how tempting it is to open the freezer and pull out something preprepared after a long day of classes.
But such a meal doesn't taste as good, and it certainly isn't as good for me.
I think this initial overwhelming is understandable, and perhaps even necessary. After we have collected and realigned these images and sounds within ourselves to make a new sort of sense of them, we can return them to the world of images and sounds as something remixed and new.
