What Price Advancement (Blog #4)
For starters, finding three people over the age of 35 and ask them their feelings on what it was like to grow up without a computer or much technology was like walking into a candy store and asking for a Hershey Bar. My friends are for the most part, over 35 years of age and it was very easy to find three to talk to about this blog.
As it turned out, all three of them have family that live on the west coast and the number one response to my inquiry was that they like how technology allows them to be able to be better in touch with their family. All three of them have a computer and a smartphone. “Don’t you use your telephone?” To which the response was ‘Because I have a smartphone, I don’t have to wait until I am at home to call, for fear that the time change would prohibit me from being able to talk to them for a long period of time. (Barker, 2011)
Another thinks that the invention of “Skype” has been the best thing since Macaroni & Cheese. She clicks on her computer, turns on Skype and can talk to her ‘grand-babies’ or current boyfriend in Florida nearly anytime of the day and visa versa. She enjoys the fact that she can read a story to them from her home here in Pennsylvania to their home in Kissimmee.
When I asked my three friends: (Sally, 65; Tony,69; and Karen, 50) if they “would be willing to step outside the box to better understand the inner workings of what makes a computer work or if they would be interested to understand what makes technology so ever changing”? (Barker, 2011) In their own way, all three of them told me that they ‘were too old to learn! Leave it to younger people to learn. What would be the point to learn all that at this point in my life? When am I really going to use it? As long as I know how to turn the damned thing on to use it for the few things that I need it for, I will be alright.’ It was really hard for me to differ with their way of thinking. I am 51 years old, struggling to get through the classes truly necessary for my degree and can’t understand why taking this particular class would be so necessary. Don’t get me wrong, there are components of what has been taught and will be taught that I can see me needing to know. But, I truly don’t see me ever needing to know how a computer really works or what a computer really does with the binary stuff. And, I will admit that it has been really hard for me to comprehend a lot of this stuff. It would be easy to blame that on my age, and perhaps that would be a good place to start. But there are other contributing factors that make just coming to school a very difficult experience for me. However, and personally, I want this experience and I fight hard to make this experience my reality…no matter how difficult is becomes for me.
When I think of my friends who appear to feel trapped within this thing called “age”, I can’t help but feel somewhat sorry for them. Why does growing old mean that you should prohibit yourself from learning and growing? Sure, there is a lot about technology that can be and does appear daunting but it is what makes life interesting.
My friend Karen says that what she misses most about having all this technology stuff is that people don’t know how to say hello anymore. She feels, like Sally and Tony, that the world has become a much colder place. People are afraid to meet face to face to talk. There is little human interaction and that causes people to pull inward. With so much technology doing a lot of the work that human used to do, many people are losing jobs. Postal workers are quickly becoming little known. Postal drivers are on the same fast track. Fewer people are writing letters so there is no need for these drivers to take mail from one place to the next. “We are all for advancement,” they said, “but at what price?” (Barker, 2011) Today the mailman - tomorrow will be something else. It is just a matter of time before more of our lives are being overtaken by computers and the advancement of technology. And, that scares me.”
More than just my three friends, others share these same sentiments. In a paper presented at the Bowling Green State University Popular Culture, Culture Club’s 2011 Battlegrounds Conference (Barker, 2011) some of these same things ring loud and clear. I am not afraid for technological advancement, but it scares me that it all seems to be coming so fast with little time to figure out what is currently in our hands.
Barker, Cory. February, 2011. Bowling Green State University Popular Culture, Culture Club’s 2011 Battlegrounds Conference. “Technological advancement?: The good, the bad and
the alternate in FOX’s Fringe. 36 pars. February, 2011
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