My, My, My Generation

OK, so the blog title will only make sense (probably) to people of my generation. This is another of those assignments that I really like to read. It's fun to read when people are surprised that older generations are internet savvy. There are always surprises out there.

So, I'd be in the middle generation of the assignment (sadly, for me, well, not really, I kinda like where I'm at). Anyway, ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you I'm a computer idiot. That might be a little extreme. I just do bad things to computers. I have a magnetic personality...literally. I can't keep hotel room cards in my pocket because by the time I get to the room it's de-magnatized. Whenever we get new computers at school, the IT people know that if there's something bad happening in the bunch it will happen with my computer. All of this is ironic because my oldest brother is like the king of computers. In the early 1970s, he was running one of the most important computers at Johns Hopkins University. He was in on the early Bell Labs group that created things like Unix and the C language. The coolest thing ever was that he got to work with Neil Young, even got invited to spend time at his ranch. He's literally a computer genius. Me, not so much. Yet, because of my job, and I don't know, things like an online class, I've become pretty proficient with the internet.

I'm on the internet a lot. Checking email, Facebook, the celebrity gossip sites (OK, so a couple years ago I was teaching The Rhetoric of Popular Culture and I would start each class with the celebrity gossip of the day...as a result, I got addicted to TMZ...I wonder if there's a patch for that???), Pittsburgh Penguin and Steeler sites, my stocks, all kinds of things occupy a lot of wasted time. I was on sabbatical for Fall and Winter term this year. To fully understand, you need to know that I live in a cabin in the woods in Monroe...a town of 620 people. I live in the suburbs of Monroe. During my sabbatical my friends called me the forest recluse. Now, by nature, I'm a loner. I amuse myself...no, really, I make myself laugh. My best friend, who I have very little in common with, and I have agreed that the thing that binds us - above all else - is that we make ourselves laugh and since we have the same sense of humor make each other laugh. So, during my sabbatical, I tried to leave my house as little as possible and begged off on invitations to dinner, lunch, movies, etc. as much as I could. The thing is I was still in contact with people because I had the internet. Of course, I eventually had to turn the internet portion of my computer off so I got actual work done.

I think that's my biggest concern about the younger generations. Because I've lived life without the internet, I know how much I get done when it's off. But I'm not sure how much people who have grown up with the internet appreciate the other options in life. I wondered, though, if I didn't have the internet if I would have been so eager to beg off on face-to-face interaction. Still, the interactions of face-to-face far exceed the interactions of mediated communication. About a year ago, I reconnected with a great friend of mine from college on Facebook. We had about two exchanges on FB and then we called each other and talked for a couple of hours. On his birthday, I called him instead of just leaving a little quip on his FB page. He told me how much it meant that I picked up the phone. Obviously, he's in my generation. But, even us oldies have come to expect the abbreviated, impersonal quick note on FB. Sad, really.

So, yes, technologies has its blessings and its curses. The hard part is that to really understand either you have to have something to compare it to. How do you know happiness if you've never known despair? How do you know the pleasures of reconnecting with an old friend if you've always been in superficial contact? Hmmm, food for thought.
Dr. Goodnow