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.
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 3rd 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?
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.'
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