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| "Technology has exceeded our humanity" (Photo credit: Toban B.) |
This was when I was in high school, about 1968, and it had something to do with Spanish class. At least this is the class I relate this to. A hand picked group of promising students was sent to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville to learn this new computer technology. Obviously I was the wrong choice. I learned nothing and remember nothing.
So goes the story of my life with computers. The technology loomed large on the horizon casting a shadow over some of us while shining brightly for others. Though I liked the science fiction nature of it all, the reality merely left me confused. I've never been too very good with technical or mechanical things.
The computers continued to pervade every aspect of life as I sometimes felt more and more left behind. The computer age had already begun by the time I was born in 1951 and yet from the standpoint of those machines I was an anachronistic holdover from another time. I was not the only one. There were many of us. I would like to have been in mental sync with the technology, but my mind refused to cooperate. Or perhaps I was too stubborn to learn.
And so it went for the next twenty years, me out of sync with the encroaching new world of computing and computers everywhere, all around me. I was using them and never thought about how pervasive computers were in every aspect of my life. Oblivious to the reality, but knowing that the societal evolution was happening with or without me. I was not part of the equation.
Then at the end of the 80's, the era of MTV and techno music that signaled the take-over of modern culture by computers, I emerged into this silicon world like a new born baby.
(Due to current computer problems this will be continued...)
Have you had difficulty adjusting to modern technology? Are computers more of a bane or a blessing to you? How have computers directly affected your life?
