Article Two

WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF?

Those of us who grew up in non technical times, who had to rely on books to glean our information and were solely at the mercy of our brain power to figure out mathematical problems, we now are the obsolete, illiterate generation. We are the ones who stumble and fall by the wayside in the face of technology. It's like starting over, but this time without the necessary tools to get the job done! Technology has taken over every aspect of our lives, there is a machine to take care of our every need, from our morning wake up call, coffee with two slices of toast, communicating with the rest of the world while we drive to work on cruise control, through the whole spectrum of our day's activities, up to the moment when we lay our bodies down on our custom crafted, fully adjustable at the flick of a switch, bed! What hope is there for those of us who learned by using our powers of reasoning? We are like the poor illiterates, who never quite got the knack of this reading and writing business and so spend the greater part of their energies trying to hide the very fact from the unforgiving world at large!! The very mention of texting, megabytes, search engines, urls, even digital, can send us running for the hills and safety! I speak with the voice of experience, I who have conscientiously, staved off the advance of technology in my life, even down to insisting on manual windows and standard shift in my new car!!
What is this fear that grips us when we are confronted with anything that does not come within our sphere of knowledge or experience? Are we afraid of ridicule? Is it that we've" been there, done that" in our education and really can't face going back to the beginning again? Or is it just that we have become so set in our ways that we resist change at whatever cost? Whatever the reason, we are genuinely afraid, no doubt about that! Yet, you know, if we put our minds to it, we can do anything, even conquer the unforgiving world of technology that has sprung up, seemingly overnight, while we were sleeping! The secret is keeping an open mind, totally and utterly letting go of everything we knew before and not letting it influence our reactions to all this new and improved data we are processing [ how's that for technical jargon??? see, even I can do it, there's hope for us all!] However we feel about it does not change the fact that it is here to stay and we have to learn to live with it or get left behind in the desert.
Actually, it's not all bad, so many aspects of it even make our lives easier, and isn't it just great to be able to track down your errant teenage son on his cellphone, and tell him to get himself home, RIGHT NOW!!!!! And it's so much easier to surf the web,[ there I go again!!] to help out with homework projects and research areas of knowledge that have only been touched on in school. Let us not forget either the joys and ease of shopping on line! Maybe too much ease! Suddenly our world really has become a small one and lies literally at our finger tips. So like it or not we have no choice but to get on the bandwagon, hold on tight and try our best to enjoy the ride!!!!!!. Carole HUGHES. 2008