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As I sit eating my homemade sandwich, I'm listening to a monologue of a fellow in front of me who has a wire hanging from his ear and another clipped to his shirt collar. I think it's some business conversation. Another fellow with a earphone in his left ear is reading his cell phone or blackberry. The couple has a laptop open as he keys into the iPhone. To my right another fellow is tuning his traditional iPod while emailing. Another asks his son to say Hi to mom as they head for the airplane. Another several are "just" on their laptops. No one in this area is not attached electronically except for Gail and me who are eating our lunch. Of course, now I too am online.
This is the world into which our youth are moving and it is this world for which we need to prepare them. A scary part is that we don't have any idea what this new world for our children will be. For that reason, we need to generalize in our teaching of electronic technology.
It's to to return one of my favorite pastimes: watching people.
How do we prepare them to hit a constantly moving target? It feels almost we're doing this with a blindfold. And after watching the video Vanessa shared on Monday's blog, I'm more doubtful than ever of our place in history. If we're notplugged in, will we cease to be viable? Will everywhere we go look like the scene at the airport - every human appendage hooked into something technological?
ReplyDeleteI saw some of this at the airport last weekend but I noticed that once we were one the plan, several people pulled out books. There were only a few people using their computers (we can't be online in the air but we can use our computers and the programs stored on them). I was happy to see people reading books.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw Wall-E, I was shocked that a major entertainment company produced a movie suggesting that we watch too much television and will eventually stop thinking for ourselves. There is a hopeful message at the end of Wall-E, but it's scary to imagine how far we could let ourselves go. If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it.
On the subject of people watching, communication and traveling, I always think of Naomi Nye's poem Two Countries when I people watch at the airport. It takes on an interesting context when one juxtaposes the idea of human touch and the increasing reliance on technology. Perhaps those are the "two countries" we deal with in relationships today...