I really do.
I love that GPS tracker in the MAPMYRUN app on my phone that keeps track of where I go on my bicycle -- how far, how fast, mph, calories burned -- and it keeps cumulative miles for me. 304.98 in July, by the way. My personal best, but a record I am on track to beat in August.
I really love my star gazing apps: elegant little programs that show me where the planets and stars are, the satellites, the Hubble telescope, and the myriad constellations that I've never heard of before.
And I like texting. Texting is such an efficient way to communicate, and it's so often fun -- and rhetorically powerful in ways that other media cannot duplicate.
But I grew up without all of this wonderful stuff. In fact, my father was in the US Navy, and then a civil servant, so I grew up in Spain and in Morocco, on or near American military bases. When I was a teenager in Spain, I lived "off base," 15 miles out in the country, away from all of my friends. We did not have a telephone in our house; we did not have a television in our house. Often, in the summers, when I was your age, the only people I had to talk to all day were not people at all -- they were dogs, Elizabeth and Champion. (They were sweet, but they couldn't really hold up their end of the conversation.) So of course, I read like crazy. What else could take me so far away, so cheaply and so easily? So even in the super scaled-back 1970s, I lived a life pretty free from any technology. (Except...one little Spanish restaurant with two gas pumps out front had a stand-up arcade version -- in black and white -- of Pong. Every week, I BEGGED my father to take the family out to dinner 'at the gas station' so we could play Pong afterwards. I was AMAZED. You could spin the ball! Zeros and ones! What the heck was going on in there??)
It's different for you kids. We saw all of you on the sonogram before you even popped out into the world. We had Polaroids, and then sophisticated prints, of you kids floating around in amniotic bliss. Technology was here and eagerly awaiting you. Many of you could work a mouse before you could work a pencil. The world has changed so much in the last 100 years -- a geological nanosecond -- and the rate of change is accelerating. And technology...well, it is changing us. We can all acknowledge that much. We are changing. The human experiment -- (latecomers to this party on Planet Earth) -- is unfolding in new directions, in ways both wonderful and alarming, and no one has any idea whatsoever of what that means. This transformation cannot be reduced to "technology, good or bad?" or "technology, pro or con?"
Technology simply IS. It is not going anywhere. I watch the Olympics too, so I see the same preview you are all seeing, and channeling into your thoughts out here -- a post-apocalyptic world where the lights have gone out and people are roaming about with bows and arrows, seeking some kind of something -- vengeance? a golden key? a magic flash drive that will reboot the world? Who knows? But that's Hollywood -- a dream, a fantasy, a projection of our society's deepest fears. It ain't real.
There have been many times since splitting that atom that humanity has ardently wished that we had never done it. But we did, and life was forever changed. And it's not just a couple superpowers goofing around by aiming a few thousand nuclear warheads at one another. Not any more. Diplomacy doesn't always matter to those who hold the weapons, either.
But then: clean nuclear technology. Clean, safe nuclear technology that could carry the energy load that oil currently carries, and more. So there's that.
Postman and Carr both tell us, Technology gives, and technology takes something in return. There is a price to be paid. Angry people with suitcase bombs = bad. Cheap energy to run hospitals and schools = good.
We have to wake up to this change, So many of us are asleep, blithely accepting the next great thing, the new cutting edge. As educated people, we have to notice it, discuss it, observe it in ourselves and in others, seek to understand it, and most of all, figure out how to hang on to our humanity and our compassion in the face of rapid economic, societal and technological change.
A writer's note: I probably went back and edited that post 6-7 times after I hit "PUBLISH." I tinker with my writing until it's either good, or good enough.
ReplyDeleteIAWY.(I agree with you.) I haven't thought about how differently adults perceive the change from books to a kindle. Children in this day and age simply associate living with techology. They are introduced to helpful games on educational systems at a young age. These educational systems gradually progess into computers and laptops. The use of technology is something that comes naturally and seems innate in humans. We have to remember that the degree of technology that we have today wasn't even available a century ago.
ReplyDeleteThis must have been difficult transition for those who were already middle-aged when computers and the like were introduced. My grandfather himself avoids the use of "complicated" gadgets such as the computer. He finds pleasure in reading books and listening to the radio. I found it quite strange that he purposefully avoided the use of such entertaining gadgets. The possibilities for technology is endless. It can include medical, warfare, and education. In the future, we might even have access to a time machine so that we could study the past. However, even this positive comes with a negative in the form of alternate timelines and universes. In the end technology can only be described as, "No pain, no gain."
Sorry for double posting, but I would like to eat a crunch bar. :)
DeleteGiant Crunch Bar it is. And, the possibilites for technology ARE endless -- the verb goes with possibilities, not technology. :) Finally, please never say "no pain, no gain" ever, ever again. You are not allowed to say that. It is on the list of cliches that I hope to eradicate from everyone's writing repertoire. There's dozens of them, and that one is definitely on the list. While we're at it, let's take "the possibilities are endless," and put that on the forbidden list too.
ReplyDeleteFor the first two years of my life, my parents never let me near a computer. They were afraid that if I used it, it would corrupt my mind and way of thinking, so they went with other alternatives to entertain me. I went to the park or the beach when my father came home from work. When my mother took care of me during the day, she would teach me how to cook, write, paint, and read. They felt that these activities were better alternatives, and were criticized as being "hippie" parents.
ReplyDeleteThen my sister, who was prone to temper tantrums was born. From that moment on, whenever my parents had to take care of my sister, they would plop me in front of the computer with a Little Critter or Magic School Bus computer game to keep me occupied. From then on, I was hooked on the computer, television, and technology in general.
Now? My entire family each has their own computer, tablet, ipod, and cell phone. We spend most of our time occupied with such amenities, going so far as to spend at least thirteen hours of the day on it. Do I blame my parents for this? Not in the slightest, it was the inevitable.
Nowadays, it is a necessity for students and adults to know how to work technology. We find that everyone needs such things in their life. For example, both my seventy-nine year old grandmother and eleven year old little sister both have "emergency" cell phones. People consider that something everyone needs.
Technology has take over not only this generation's world, but those before us. Whether that is a good or bad thing, it is unclear because, as you said earlier Mrs. Fletcher, technology simply IS.