There is a computer lab with Internet capabilities and a word processor that allows a student to finish a research paper in half the time that it would take if they were . writing it.

It is a lab that sits shorter next to a nine-floor library, a lab that holds more information in a hundred foot perimeter than the nine stories.

The books gather dust. Notebooks are being replaced by laptops, a screen for a page, a pen for a click of a key. Entire novels are being summarized and slapped onto a Web page. After all, it is more convenient.

One by one, people who merely “take the opportunities given to them” are being converted to technology, the new. It’s in the commercials, on the billboards, in the movies, on the Internet.

It’s in the newspaper. To get a commentary published in the Herald, I move my thoughts from a notebook to a computer, onto a server. It will be published on paper, it will be published on screen.

Published in paper? Sure, the Herald is free to students, free to anyone who comes to the campus. But it’s free on the Internet as well. Won’t the paper become trash? Next to the Internet, isn’t it trash already?

It’s been said that newspapers will no longer exist years from now, that news and stories will be exclusively on the Internet someday. Internet publications are growing on the Web like babies in a hospital room, crying for attention. It is more convenient, less wasteful. It takes less time. Less time.

My eyes are going blind from staring at a screen. They ache when I try to see the details of a tree. I see the tree. I do not see the color of leaves and the texture of wood and the nests of branches and the birds. I can’t see these things without effort because I am blind to them. I see a tree.

This is a world of walls and separation. Walls created by trying to know someone through Facebook. Walls created by trying to know a place through pictures some stranger took. Walls created by trying to understand words that are typed in a single font.

There are signs of life poking holes, revealing light. Man will still create art onto a piece of paper, still write stories onto a piece of paper, still make music using acoustic instruments. These things still exist. These signs of life will always be there, I know, regardless of further advancements in technology and science.

They are only repressed.

And so when the holes are poked into the wall of separation, the light is stronger than before. Stronger in the dark than the light of a screen.

You can hold it in your hands. You can add whatever you want to it, you can take things out. You can tell me to my face what you think of this commentary, and not be afraid to show your face or tell me your name.

And instead of clicking “X” on the Herald Web site, you can rip it apart. Do you hear that noise? Can you?

Reach Ryan W. Hunton at news@chherald.com.