I think Ipolito at first tackled the idea of sharing information as cheating. He says that school systems, specifically major universities, have become increasingly negative towards the idea of sharing information, to the point where students can’t even discuss what they learned out of class, almost as if they are being presented classified CIA documents. The truth is however, sharing information, Ipolitos argues, is the very purpose of the internet; we use the Internet to access all the information we need or want to see. In fact, sometimes we can even mess with others’ files. Still, in the over ten years since Ipolito gave his lecture, I would say that the “university culture” has not changed or been resolved; in fact, I think if anything, schools have gotten stricter in their policies on cheating. The school system seems to think we are only supposed to learn things with their method, which has consistently been trying to process the necessary information without any help. For me, as I have Asperger’s and ADHD, which contributes to much of my short term memory loss, I feel like this culture is especially harmful, as it feels like I am not allowed to forget anything, and if I do and I seek help to remember, it’s cheating.
Ipolito also touched on the new trend of people altering media and other forms of work. This kind of reminds me of youtube videos where they alter voices to make them sound like the opposite gender, or the idea of making a single image (meme) into an internet icon. When I think of Ipolito’s “younger, faster generation,” I think of people who don’t have the same constraints as their mothers and fathers when it comes to sharing and altering information. I think when it comes to entertainment, we have become more liberal in our attitudes towards creatively altering art. However, in an academic setting, I think altering information is still frowned upon. I think there is a place for telling students what they can alter; for instance, it shouldn’t be allowed for a student to lie and/or misrepresent what a scholar said. But what if the student simply altered the media to make it humorous or more understandable? I can’t see the dishonesty in that.