Not Austen related but...

It has taken me a while, but I am finally beginning to accept the dawning of a new Era in history. It is called the Electronic, or Globalization, or something like that. It is somehow stretching beyond Information, which I understand has been with us since Morse Code.

Here are the signs we are moving into a new Age -  we email our boss to ask for leave; we write blogs like this; we follow directions from a talking object in our car;  and one's cat can go viral on You Tube.

The young folks like it and have adapted amazingly – to them, this life with interconnecting, mobile gadgets is normal, and a life when the only entertainment media the family had were three bulky items called a radio, a television set and a record player seems to them like an episode from Horrible Histories. We have moving into this newer Era at the speed of about 10Gbps, and faster if you google anything with the words 'Hi-Speed'.

Why did it take so long for me to figure out that we were moving from one Era to another? Why have I been fighting it? Why have I been grumbling about having to go through phone trees to get a live person, go through a Help Desk 3,000 miles away when I need the IT guy on the 3^rd floor to come down and fix my computer, order pizza from the restaurant on the next street by giving my order, complete with detailed directions about cross-streets, to an office 1,000 miles away, and putting up with endless work interruptions because of Computer Downtimes?

The most puzzling alteration is the way that machines are set up to work. Someone installs a program on your pc, and leaves. then you have to call him back because this new configuration caused something else to malfunction. This is normal. Thirty years ago, it would be called sloppy work. But it is not sloppy - no human can possibly have control over the millions of little interractions that take place in a motherboard.

So wasn’t it simpler before? And wasn’t it – well, better?

I must be understanding with myself here.  I grumble because I have not been through an Age Transition before.

I imagine it was challenging for parents at the end of the Stone Age when the Bronze Age was coming in: ‘My kids have no time for stone anymore. It’s all bronze, bronze, bronze since some nerd got the idea of mixing copper and tin. I’ve never seen anything so gaudy in my life. My daughter wants bronze jewelry for her birthday. She says that all her friends wear bronze ornaments. Nobody wears tin anymore…’

And there has been so much for older people to learn! Perhaps before the Transition of the Next Age (back to Agriculture – Subsistence at that - after all the fossil fuels have been used up, thus depriving us of Power?) that a little handbook be available for the over 40’s. ‘How to plant potatoes’. ‘How to make candles from sheep fat.’ ‘How to tell a good story by the fire.’ and 'What to use for fuel in the fire.'

Love me, Love my Dog...

The above is a title of a chapter in Edgeworth's novel 'Belinda' published in 1801. And to think that I thought that Peter Shelley made up the phrase. If you like the song, here's a clip from YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v044SCWA4LA

Love Maria Edgeworth, by the way. I know Austen read her works, and I can imagine her chuckling at passages here and there. I have read 'Helen' and am almost through with 'Belinda.'

The Worst Austen Mother is...

...Lady Bertram. The Bertram girls didn't get any moral or sensible guidance. They got adoration from Aunt Norris; and assurance of their superiority - but they are frightened of their father's remoteness and their mother is always stretched on the sofa. She is just not there. She must be secretly downing laudanum. Probably hides it under Pug.
Even Sir Bertram has given up on his wife as a parent. Who gets the flak about the theatricals? Aunt Norris.
Mrs. Bennet is quite a good mother - she is avidly interested in her girls' affairs, for good or ill. But Lady Bertram neglects her girls. Can you imagine any heart-to-heart chats conducted with them; any trips to their rooms at night to kiss them goodnight and listen to their troubles...spoiled, with an exaggerated opinion of their own importance, they did not develop the skills needed to make sensible judgments and lacking that, and needing to get out of home and away from their father's grave, remote but very controlling presence, they make terrible decisions.
Fanny actually has more self-esteem then the Bertram girls, because she was always needed. Firstly by her mother, in helping her with the little ones, and later at Mansfield Park - Lady Bertram can do without her daughters, but not without her niece.
I'd like to see a sequel where the daughters get it together and find happiness. But Maria is a social outcast. Perhaps she could go to America or Italy where her past would not be known.