The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 5 of 18)

/p> p> Please do not expect any of the younger generation to be able to give you change if the computerized cash register does not tell them how much to give you. It is sad to watch. Just for fun, after they have put into the 'puter how much you have paid them, say oh wait I have the change and just watch the turmoil. br> -- Elaine Kyle /p>

Mr. Crocker's comments about the speed of advancing technology, his obstinate and predictably generational response to it struck a cord for me. When I need help with computer problems my "go to" is my 14-year-old. My 19-year-old was our in-house certified computer expert until recently when he left, deflated from a computer store after upgrading his laptop to "state of the art" only to see jump drives (the kind you hang around your neck) that had three times the capacity of his newly resurrected machine.

My most poignant memory of technophobia is of my grandmother, who in her 90s was unable to master the intricacies of a reel-to-reel battery operated tape recorder, this from a woman who traveled in Conestoga wagons and spent the last years of her life jetting to Hawaii. (In her youth she was cutting edge on the South Dakota prairie taking and developing black and white photographs from a Brownie box camera in her sod house!) Seems to me technophobia is a reasonable and all too human response to the sense of obsolescence experienced by all of us. You used to be able to coast for years using the tech you were comfortable with; now that tech will be gone in six months, if you are lucky. This can have its upside, watching the MSM's confusion as its relevance drains away like sandcastles on the shore is endlessly amusing….However the old "waiting for the older generation to pass away" is no more, in any sense, now 19-year-olds are bulldozed to the curb and the "younger" crowd rushes past.

Personally I plan to be cryogenically suspended and awoken as an android capable of replacing chips (black box tech) implanted in my head or whatever as needed to catch up....Oh wait, I read about implanting chips in people last week...now what?

p>Pitch forks and torches at midnight on the castle draw bridge appears the only answer. br> -- Craig C. Sarver br> Behind Enemy Lines, Seattle, Washington /p> p> Complexity creates jobs for specialists. Specialists lobby for greater complexity. Everybody wins. br> --

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