I’ve been reading the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Fascinating book, fascinating character. He truly helped change the course of technology, even the world over the last 25 years–or as he put it, he helped “bend the universe.”
But I, for one, have never fully embraced the changes. Part of the reason is I’m old. Part of it is that I’m a techno-idiot.
However, I like to think that my anxiety and doubts about the dizzying pace of technological advancement are based on something more valid than just my own personal inabilities to cope.
All this came into focus over the last week when my 28-year-old daughter visited the U.P. for the first time in six years. She’d rarely seen snow, she wasn’t much familiar with small towns and rural areas, she didn’t know much about the area that I’ve called home for the last eight years.
More than a few times while we were driving in town or out in the woods, I’d glance over at her, and she’d be furiously texting on her iPhone, her nose no more than a foot from the tiny keyboard. The snowflakes fluttering down from the sky, settling on the quaint little buildings and pine trees, the bundled-up pedestrians hustling here and there, and the roads building up a cushion of white? She was missing all of that because she was pounding out a message to someone a thousand miles away.
Then there was the vivid image of her and my 4-year-old grandson together on a couch in a gorgeous log cabin on a frozen lake, again with snow lightly falling, and quiet all around…and what were they doing? Soaking it all in? No, she was on her phone again, pounding out letters while he was on his brand-new Kindle Fire, slicing digital fruit with a digital sword to score thousands of points in some mindless (but cute) digital game.
Were they missing something? Were they failing to appreciate the real and tangible and beautiful world all around us?
I challenged her on this. She responded by saying, “Well, Dad, when we took a walk in the woods with the dogs, I stopped a couple of times to take pictures. Remember? I really thought it was beautiful.”
Well, that, I think, is part of the problem. It seems that so many young people these days are captive to the technology. They need it with them at all times. They need it to validate their existence–whether it’s on Facebook or You Tube or with texting. They can’t seem to simply leave their little gadgets behind and encounter the world, directly and unencumbered.
If they’re not texting, they’re talking on the phone, or they’re on the Internet, or they’re listening to their iPod. Go to a gym sometime, and see how many weightlifters and treadmillers have cords coming out of their ears.
Yeah, yeah, I know music’s great and it’s important to stay connected with your friends blah blah blah, but wouldn’t it be better if we sometimes tuned out the technology and tuned in the world and the people directly in front of us?
Okay, so I’m old and out-of-touch and out-of-step.
Not so out-of-touch, though, that, out of curiosity on that wonderful winter afternoon, I did pick up that little digital game of swords and fruit, and tried my hand at it a couple of times. Actually, four times. Maybe it was five or six. In any case, I never could beat my 4-year-old grandson at it.
Stupid game.