This passing summer has brought a number of new things to my life; new granddaughter, new job, and journey to China and Tibet. It also brought some heartaches associated with aging family members and memory issues. Additionally, I discovered additional gaps created between younger, older and oldest world views.
I read books, magazines and reports. I remember my earliest days as a print reporter (I had yet to become a journalist). After a frantically orchestrated, manic dance to get paper from typewriter to the horseshoe?shaped editor?s desk, my carefully crafted prose was sliced and butchered into inverted pyramid form by an editor who I often associated with barbarian hordes sweeping across the Steppes. It disappeared into the composing room while we stumbled out the door for a bit or refreshment. After a quick bite, we returned for the ?hot off the presses? first runs, listening to the whirl and whine of the huge accelerating presses creating a vibration through the floor. The first issues had that cloying sweet smell of news paper with drying ink on them.
Today, I scan online for news and topics of interest, and check community events schedules, my social networks, emails and chats. My step-son has his iPhone, linked to his iPad, linked to his Internet. He reads books on Kindle. His world is entirely electronic. Even as a lad, he was connected. Camping to him could not be accomplished unless he had at least a portable gaming device and DVD player with extra batteries or could be run off the car battery. He, like so many of his friends and contemporaries, is all but hardwired into the Internet?or perhaps wireless connected would be more appropriate.
I?ve written several articles and given talks about this current age of communication. It is wondrous and frightening at the same time. Never have so many in the world shared so much?and so little. While there is a wealth of information on the World Wide Web, there is three times as much rubbish.?Neil Postman wrote a wonderful book more than 30 years ago called Amusing Ourselves to Death. It looks at and contrasts the Orwellian view of the future with Huxley?s Brave New World. At the core of his observation was a suggestion that the passive nature of television, television news and information would evolve ever more into trying ?to entertain people rather than inform them in order to capture their attention. ?I don?t think he was far off the mark. The Internet has taken up the gauntlet in a similar fashion. Less passive than TV, it requires some participation, yet a massive amount of it is about entertainment. How else, in an election year, can so much emphasis be focused on trivial matters, politicians spoken gaffs (nothing new there), the Kardashians and Kelly Ripa.
Recently I sat in a health clinic waiting room. On one side were seniors, and on the other, younger persons. The older people were chatting and reading books. The younger people were engrossed in their ?smart? phones, texting and playing games, oblivious to the immediate environment. I wondered what happened to Bill Gates? and Steve Jobs? global town square and village.
Quote for the Month: ??The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.? ?Dave Barry.
Patrick Coolen is a Customer Services Supervisor for ResCare HomeCare for?Thurston and Mason counties as well as an ?independent consultant in on matters of importance to seniors and their families; PatrickCoolen7@gmail.com.
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