Look How Far We've Come

Technology forms a huge portion of the college student's daily life. We do a large bulk of our assignments using our laptop wireless computers: writing essays, lab reports, research papers. We communicate largely through the computer, chatting on Instant Messenger, writing on walls through Facebook, and emailing. We enjoy music and share it with others through iTunes. We express ourselves through blogs and web journals. We use our computers as extensions of ourselves; the part they play has become so natural that we rarely consider that they have only recently come into existence.

When I hear tales from my parents, or even from adults who graduated from college less than ten years ago, I have to remind myself that the world was a different place back then. To my mind, college and computers go hand in hand, and it's a phenomena most other college students relate to. College students across the country know the time that can be wasted procrastinating while surfing on Facebook, the resulting giggles when a roommate IMs you from across the room, and the despair felt when a computer crashes the night before an assignment is due and loses that essay you've worked on for the last several days. Such experiences have become common place among young adults, but they are completely foreign territory to a majority of the older generation.

My grandmother has had little contact with computers in her seventy-four years on the planet. Up until last year, while he still lived, my grandfather was the one in the house who experimented online, sending emails to friends and downloading pictures of the great-grans sent from family. Very recently, however, my mother has convinced Granny of how vital to modern life a basic knowledge of computers is. Every day, despite fear of the unknown and frustration when things get confusing, Granny tries something new on the computer, whether simply downloading and organizing pictures, replying to an email, or searching for RV parts on ebay. I really admire her for stepping out of her comfort zone to adapt to the changing times.

Though it may seem that the older generation has the most to learn from us, the digital generation, we should not allow ourselves to grow conceited. We still have much to learn from our elders, the least of which is to remember our roots, to refuse to succumb to the temptation of taking our many entertainment and time-saving devices for granted. It's cliche, but it's true: with great power, comes great responsibility. We've been empowered with the amazing technology at our fingertips, and along with that comes the responsibility to use that power wisely, to make a point of practicing the fading arts of face-to-face conversation, hand-writing notes, and not being ashamed to learn "linearly" by reading a good book cover to cover. We should also take the time to learn the history of the tools we use so often, of how the internet came into being, when the first computer was made, and who made it. This is important stuff; let's not forget who brought it to us!