Modern Technology

The future.
Yesterday we went to the library and, as is typical of my children, they all ran in separate directions. The nice thing about the library, though, is that as long as I have an eye on Remewin, I'm totally okay with this.

So, after directing Vicbowin to the Young Adult section, I took a comfy seat next to Albowin and the computer he was using. (Typical Albowin... he cares nothing for the books and everything for the technology).

I enjoyed a great few minutes of childless mommying before I noticed that Albowin was using his computer screen to maneuver his game character.

"Hey!" I said, quite impressed, "that's a touch screen."

"Yeah." he mumbled back at me.

"But how did you know that?" I asked, wondering what had prompted him to touch the image.

Albowin shrugged, "I just thought I'd try."

I sat there just a bit stunned. What a world my boy is growing up in, where touch screen technology is already so common place that he actually considers it an option.

I myself would never have even purposely tried that. I might have accidentally, out of habit, poked the screen to get it moving (I know you've done that too), but I would never have consciously thought that a desktop computer monitor would be touch capable. It wouldn't have even crossed my mind. It wouldn't have entered my psyche.

Yet, for my children, it's so commonplace that it is something they actually think about. Something they consider!

Last night I watched 'Star Trek' (the most recently released one) and marvelled at thei sci-fi technology. What would it be like to just 'beam' somewhere instead of having to worry about ridiculous things like travel. I watched as the characters poked at pieces of glass and used their hands to move their computer screens.

Then I realized that I recognized the gesture. The casual slide of the hand to move one screen away and see what's underneath. The separating of two fingers in order to enlarge what you are looking at. I realized I've seen my friends and family do this with their computers.

What a world my children live in!

100 years ago they were still using horses as a mode of transportation. 50 years ago they we had entered the space race. Yesterday my son considered the option of touch screen technology.

I'm taking this class about XHTML coding this summer and on our first day (last week) the instructor showed us this video with all sorts of technological (mind blowing) statistics like:

The top 10 in demand jobs of 2010 did not exist in 2004.


1 in 8 couples married in the US  last year met online.


If MySpace were a country it would be the 5th largest in the world.


The number of text messages sent and received everyday exceeds the population of the world.

The other day I was driving down the road and the thought occurred to me that if I were to break down I wouldn't know what to do. Then I remembered that I'd lived 2/3 of my life without a cell phone and somehow survived... so it was entirely possible I would still survive.

Technology just astounds me and even though I'd like to think that I have a fair grasp on whats all going on, I know that the time will come when my children outsmart me in this regard. They already do! The concept that I actually remember when the internet came out is as foreign to them as if I had said 'The color green didn't exist when I was a child.'

Then I start to think, if their brains are already wired so that the current technology is BASIC, then what can they accomplish? It's an exciting thought, and it was all brought on by the fact that Albowin touched that screen.

Anyway, I thought I'd add that YouTube video. You need to watch it, it's really amazing.

Comments

Ashy said…
That's definitely something to think about... I suppose I'm a little more used to technology since Dan is a CIT major and plays with computers all the time; it's going to be interesting to see how things develop as he goes through his career.

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