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Random Scenes from This Hi-Tech Life - August 01, 2007
Scene 1, 2003. This seems positively "last century" now, but I still have a paper copy of the e-mail which my daughter, who was in high school at the time, e-mailed from the middle of a non-computer class. She wrote: "I am in AP Gov't [Advanced Placement Government] right now and we are using the school set of iBooks and I am writing an e-mail to you. This is really cool. Hope your [sic] having a great day. P.S. Print this message off and put it on your monitor as a marking point in education.... Hahaha."
Scene 2, 2005. College graduation, football field at a large (17,000 students) public university. Everyone is counting on their cell phones to keep them in touch with their graduates down on the field, or to find each other after the ceremony. Because of all the cell phones in use, many of us simply cannot get through. Near-panic sets in. How will we find our daughter afterward? What did we do before cell phones?
Scene 3, 2006. I realized that my hands and head had been absolutely rewired the day I suddenly caught myself mentally pressing "ctrl S" to "save" the minutes of the meeting I was writing by hand in a notebook.
Scene 4, 2006. My daughter e-mails me a photo of an old friend's new baby. I see the baby's grandmother that day in the grocery store, and she is shocked to learn I've already seen her grandchild. We now expect to get photos of newborns almost the second they drop out of the womb. I'm not sure how I would have felt about photos of intimate scenes in the delivery room.
Scene 5, Spring 2007. As I follow the webcam which shows views from the Starbucks Coffee House on Princes Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, (to keep up with daughter studying there). I see buses crowding the streets, their red and yellow lights signaling that it is already evening. Rain drops puddle on the camera lens. I see solitary figures standing to wait at the crosswalks. Is that one Doreen? No, she doesn't wear a white coat. I see a steeple; is that the church she visited yesterday? I see the Edinburgh Castle presiding over the whole city in its very prominent, medieval position. I see homegoing passengers in buses: is she in that one? Was she able to catch the 5 p.m. bus after class on Friday that she was worried about? I can see the hands on the clock tower now: 5 p.m. It feels good to be this connected by technology, but frightening to know that I'm ultimately still powerless to help her an ocean away. Again, we put our faith in God, the real "eye in the sky."
Scene 6, More scenes from Scotland, 2007. My daughter posts pictures of her travels and adventures in Scotland almost as soon as they happen, and I'm overjoyed to look at them. Again, we are able to feel so much more connected: my friends and relatives had to wait almost a full year to see photos of my travels while I spent a year of study abroad. But yet, does the "not having to wait" spoil some of the drama, the anticipation, the excitement of the exotic, the otherworldliness of foreign travel?
Scene 7, 2007. Maybe it is about time for me to do my bill paying online after a recent phone experience ordering new checks for my checkbook. My kids wonder why I still use them anyway. So when I called to order checks, I find out it costs $3 extra for the privilege of buying them by phone. And then the salesman kept trying to sell me four boxes, so I had to keep insisting that I only wanted two, and then he tried to sell me a new cover, and an extra check register, and a duplicate check system, and of course shipping was extra, and he tried to push on me the in-plant rush job. When he finally read me the grand total of $33, I asked him to read back exactly what each charge was. He had written in an extra $3 for identity protection! Now, while I'm concerned about identity protection, I didn't think an extra $3 would buy me that much protection.
Scene 8, 2007. I get a call on my cell phone in the middle of the day from my daughter in Scotland just asking me how to fry chicken. The year I lived in Spain, (10 months actually) I think I made exactly two phone calls home. One on Christmas Day, which I remember clearly, and another in the spring, probably just to talk or maybe to do some business related to college loans. But my mother saved all my airgram letters (light onion skin paper) and I still have them for my grandchildren to marvel at someday (I hope).
Anyone ready to go back to paying cash, old fashioned photos, and twice a year phone calls?
Contributed by Melodie Davis: [email protected] Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way
Scene 1, 2003. This seems positively "last century" now, but I still have a paper copy of the e-mail which my daughter, who was in high school at the time, e-mailed from the middle of a non-computer class. She wrote: "I am in AP Gov't [Advanced Placement Government] right now and we are using the school set of iBooks and I am writing an e-mail to you. This is really cool. Hope your [sic] having a great day. P.S. Print this message off and put it on your monitor as a marking point in education.... Hahaha."
Scene 2, 2005. College graduation, football field at a large (17,000 students) public university. Everyone is counting on their cell phones to keep them in touch with their graduates down on the field, or to find each other after the ceremony. Because of all the cell phones in use, many of us simply cannot get through. Near-panic sets in. How will we find our daughter afterward? What did we do before cell phones?
Scene 3, 2006. I realized that my hands and head had been absolutely rewired the day I suddenly caught myself mentally pressing "ctrl S" to "save" the minutes of the meeting I was writing by hand in a notebook.
Scene 4, 2006. My daughter e-mails me a photo of an old friend's new baby. I see the baby's grandmother that day in the grocery store, and she is shocked to learn I've already seen her grandchild. We now expect to get photos of newborns almost the second they drop out of the womb. I'm not sure how I would have felt about photos of intimate scenes in the delivery room.
Scene 5, Spring 2007. As I follow the webcam which shows views from the Starbucks Coffee House on Princes Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, (to keep up with daughter studying there). I see buses crowding the streets, their red and yellow lights signaling that it is already evening. Rain drops puddle on the camera lens. I see solitary figures standing to wait at the crosswalks. Is that one Doreen? No, she doesn't wear a white coat. I see a steeple; is that the church she visited yesterday? I see the Edinburgh Castle presiding over the whole city in its very prominent, medieval position. I see homegoing passengers in buses: is she in that one? Was she able to catch the 5 p.m. bus after class on Friday that she was worried about? I can see the hands on the clock tower now: 5 p.m. It feels good to be this connected by technology, but frightening to know that I'm ultimately still powerless to help her an ocean away. Again, we put our faith in God, the real "eye in the sky."
Scene 6, More scenes from Scotland, 2007. My daughter posts pictures of her travels and adventures in Scotland almost as soon as they happen, and I'm overjoyed to look at them. Again, we are able to feel so much more connected: my friends and relatives had to wait almost a full year to see photos of my travels while I spent a year of study abroad. But yet, does the "not having to wait" spoil some of the drama, the anticipation, the excitement of the exotic, the otherworldliness of foreign travel?
Scene 7, 2007. Maybe it is about time for me to do my bill paying online after a recent phone experience ordering new checks for my checkbook. My kids wonder why I still use them anyway. So when I called to order checks, I find out it costs $3 extra for the privilege of buying them by phone. And then the salesman kept trying to sell me four boxes, so I had to keep insisting that I only wanted two, and then he tried to sell me a new cover, and an extra check register, and a duplicate check system, and of course shipping was extra, and he tried to push on me the in-plant rush job. When he finally read me the grand total of $33, I asked him to read back exactly what each charge was. He had written in an extra $3 for identity protection! Now, while I'm concerned about identity protection, I didn't think an extra $3 would buy me that much protection.
Scene 8, 2007. I get a call on my cell phone in the middle of the day from my daughter in Scotland just asking me how to fry chicken. The year I lived in Spain, (10 months actually) I think I made exactly two phone calls home. One on Christmas Day, which I remember clearly, and another in the spring, probably just to talk or maybe to do some business related to college loans. But my mother saved all my airgram letters (light onion skin paper) and I still have them for my grandchildren to marvel at someday (I hope).
Anyone ready to go back to paying cash, old fashioned photos, and twice a year phone calls?
Contributed by Melodie Davis: [email protected] Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way
