Thanks for the note on technology and the fact it is moving very fast and unless a person can keep up with the computer and all of it’s info,we will lose out especially keeping up with the kids, music etc, etc. I am 70 and learn something new every day and interesting. It is fascinating what technology has provided for us.  Thanks for the computer and the ability to view all sorts of activities. My concern however is that I wish the elderly and those who do not have a computer could find out much of the same information from the TV. The elderly watch TV, many all day long. What do you think?

Dear Ms. Smith…

Just because one embraces technology…doesn’t mean they are required to have a love affair with it.

I am of the generation behind you and know the differences of a simpler life, and a life based in technology masquerading as a simpler life, as I have actually lived both.

I appreciate the connections and ability to communicate at the speed of light that technology brings us. I also see the reality of how much time is spent in learning it. Because as an artist, I’m of the school of thought that when you work with a tool…you also know how to fix it.

My acceptance of this tool is it’s own journey…and my high school friends can verify that. …as well as my living Mentors. …as they both get frustrated with me at times because of my animosity and frustration with the tools related to technology.

However I am also reminded that in everything there is balance, so maybe when we can learn accepting good with bad on levels of acceptance…we begin to understand the truth in balance.

My surgery was last week, and I am beginning to mend.

I hope you are well…

Amy, PennDragon Studios

simpletownUSA.com

Generation divide…I do find this a revealing topic.  Now, I am 62; my own children are in their thirties.  Some several years ago, I taught English to middle school children.  Veering off into a semi-intellectual topic, I earnestly explained how television was the invention that separated my parents’ generation from mine.  As anyone who’s taught twelve year olds knows, one must forge on with any topic in a desperate attempt to make a point;otherwise, the time is lost to countless, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You mean your parents are still alive? Wow!’ ‘Your parents didn’t like, want , know about televison? ‘Were your parents orphans?’  ‘NO,’ I explained and continued, carefully avoiding eye contact. I then offered that the invention which separated my generation from my children’s was the computer. ’ Your kids took your computer?’ ‘If your parents had a computer, they could watch television on it.’  ‘You have kids?!’  Now, I’m wondering why I thought this topic so interesting.  Finally, the big question, ‘What invention do you think will separate you from your children?’  Silence.  Then, one proud hand flies up.  ‘BOOK SOCKS!’ came the confident answer.  Now book socks are cloth coverings for textbooks, which that year had become a popular replacement for the traditional paper protectors donated by the electric company or perhaps the local bank. And once again, ‘What was I thinking when I started this line of questioning?’  Thus, somewhere there are young adults wandering about with their Kindles, thinking, ‘Book socks aren’t going to fit on these things.  Man, no way these machines will catch on!’

peace and grace

Dear Liz,  I personally embraced computers when they came to be, I was a Petty Officer in the navy using the first computers to come around. They were huge and cumbersome and extremely difficult, within a few years they got smaller and much easier to use.  I had a very silly passion in High School and College and that was typing, so using a keyboard was second sense to me.  I type 110 words a minute.  And being in the Navy I had to adjust and learn all the technology that came around for the 26 yrs I served my country both as a Petty Officer and then as a gov’t employee.  I haven’t come across a piece of technology I haven’t’ been able to figure out on my own, my children are there to help me if I find something I cant get.

One wk from today I will turn 54 and when my children asked what I wanted for my birthday I was totally honest with them, "I don’t want or need anything", I told them if they choose to get me a gift make it something I will think of them when I look at it or use it.

On the negative side of turning 54, the military makes you put write the "date" as day, month, year,  now this wouldn’t upset or get most people antsy, but for me that makes my bday 9/11, as someone who was at the pentagon on that date, this wasn’t an easy pill to swallow. 

So do I stay in or go out on my bday?  this is my question to my children’s generation, not technical or generational question just one I’d like to see answered.

When it comes to music Rock and Roll was the breaking point for my father.  He grew up on Opera and the Big Bands.  My music background was basically Opera, Classical, and the Big Bands.  Later I added Country, Folk and Jazz.  I generally like all music but the new forms of music today have few really good pieces or singers.  My training on the piano was Classical so that is a big interest.  My Grandmother sang Opera so there is that tie. 

In 1985, I received my Master’s of Science in Computers in Education.  My first computer was a Commodore 64 and my daughter started using it at 4-1/2 years in 1982.  My father never took to the advances in technology because it meant he could no longer fix his cars on his own.  Keeping his cars in top condition was his main interest his entire life and it was something he couldn’t do with the addition of computers to the new cars.  My daughter knows more about technology than I but I only need to have a machine that I can do my research and writing on with ease. 

There will always be differences between the generations in the changes that time brings but that is life.  If you don’t like it that don’t deal with it.  Go do your own thing.  

You’re right!