Date 12/5/2013 Stuck in the Middle with…Technology Has technology simplified of complicated my life? I have to say both. It has simplified my life by putting resources at my fingertips, but then I get hit with sensory overload. I know that I stuck in the middle with technology. Sometimes I long for the “Good OL’ Days” when life was simpler. Technology, on the other hand allows me to get answers to my questions right now. The paradox is I use today’s technology to revisit the past. In the past we got to know people face to face, played with friends, neighbors and cousins and grew up with them. Now I have relatives that I’ve never even met except through Facebook. We used to have Ice Cream Socials. All the neighbors would gather together with their ice cream freezers and best ice cream recipes and make ice cream. The kids would help crank the ice cream freezers, but mostly we played with each other. We needed no machines to have fun. When the ice cream was ready, we were starved. We ate as much ice cream as we could and then went back to playing; by the time we got home we were ready for bed. We knew how to play. our dads taught us how to work. You could get by on an “8th grade education”, but a High School education was better. How can we blend the two worlds together? I have two grandsons, one wants to be a builder and the other one wants to be an architect. The builder may sound non-technical; technology has made building easier, more efficient and better. Architects today rely on technology a great deal with the computer drawing aids. In order to truly understand what you are doing you need to know the basics, pencil, paper, square, triangle, French curve etc. Our dads taught us how to work. You could get by on an “8th grade education”, but a High School education was better. What about me? I love the “Good OL’ Days”, but here I am in school trying to learn how to repair computers. Stuck in the middle… I love the new technology, we have more research resources at our fingertips than anyone before us ever had. We can research 24/7, we can go to class in our birthday suits and we can blast our stereos while in the library, but when was the last time you asked a librarian for help or sit at the teacher’s desk to better understand a concept? Technology has all but eliminated the need for tune-ups for our cars. A tune-up today consists of cap, rotor and wires. When the last time you helped your Dad was change the spark plugs, rebuild a carburetor or even adjusted the valves? Shopping is a whole new experience with today’s technology. When was the last time you bought a new suit, dress or pair of shoes and tried them on before you bought them? Technology has brought us many convinces, but at what cost? Technology runs the world today, but occasionally we need to take a moment to revisit the past to see how it used to be. Title derived from the 1972 hit single Stuck in the Middle With You by Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty performed by Stealers Wheel.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 02:22:51 +0000
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