Issue 7 球拍

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7、"The video camera provides such an accurate and convincing record of contemporary life that it has become a more important form of documentation than written records."

As the technology develops, it is more and more convenient for mankind to record their contemporary life with video camera. Moreover, the documentation provided by video camera and the like is way more accurate and convincing than written records. Obstinately, video camera’s documentation has becomes a more important form of documenting people’s life. However, the written records have its unique advantages.
I concede that in many occasions, using video camera is a better way than written records. Happy lovers use video camera to momorise the rode of their relationship. Loving parents use video camera to document their children’s growing up. It will be jeered when two friends, in their pleasant journey, still use pen or pencil to record what happens. Indeed, video camera provides us with a absolute accurate way to document our life.
However, written record has its magic. Word, sentence, paragraphs, narratives, argumentations, and poems provided us with another equally important way to see our comtemporary life. Even though people tend to use more video camera to document their lives, there are still newspapers( no matter written on the paper or on the internet), magazines, novels, anthologies and drama, all of which are written records. The most significant advantages lies in those written records, when comparing with the records of video camera, is that the written records are not only about some pictures or video clips but filled with the author’s thoughts, and thus shinning with inspiring mind, meticulous logic, and beautiful rhetoric which affect people in the way that can not be replaced by video camera’s documentation. Everyone would thought it funny when newspapers are without words but only pictures because the reality can be recorded but people’s thoughts and the things that lies behind the reality can not and those, including the editor’s opinion and the news’ background are exactly what people want. In documenting people’s lives, written records can be mixed with thoughts while records of video camera’s can not.
Another advantage of written records is that this method enables people to document not only one person or one group, but the whole society, that is written records document people’s live in a macro way. The renowned novelist, Margaret Mitchell with the “Gone with the wind”, gave us a clear picture about what happened before and during the civil war, and more importantly , represented us with what caused the civil war to happen, the background of the civil war, and exceptionally complicated relationships among the people in her book. It seems that the whole America in the civil war time is recorded in her book. Another example is the study of history. Historian use written record more than video camera’s record in analyzing the ancient society. One may argue that there are even no video cameras in ancient times. But even if video cameras exist, how can one being able to record the whole nation’s production of grain? Taking a picture of the whole nation’s grain? All written recorder have to do is write down the number.
To sum up, although video cameras can document people’s contemporary life in an accurate and convincing way, the written record has its unique advantages that can not be replaced by the former. Whether one form of documentation is more important than another does not just depend on the accuracy but also many aspects. So, the proclamation that the video camera’s record is more important can not hold. From the above analysis, we can see that both have their advantages, thus the two are equally important.