I'm admittedly new to blogging, and make no apologies about that. I have, after all, written and published two books, which is surely a more daunting task. I can't shake this nagging feeling, though, that the "younger generation" has a smugness that comes from being so comfortable navigating all these social networking tools - whether Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging - and probably other resources I've never heard of. I've looked to my own children for advice (which they give freely and lovingly.) I felt so proud when my daughter tweeted me that "@aromoff you are tweeting quite nicely" - indicating that I'm no longer an embarrassment and must be ready for prime time! I've even sought the help of a 15-year-old, who gave me the sage advice to just "try all the menus - don't worry about instructions," as he set up the Facebook page for the Hearing Loss Association of New Jersey for us.
But now that I've started to blog, tweet, IM,"Like" and attempted other rituals of this digital age, it dawned on me - WHOA!! (and that term alludes to the command to a horse to stop and is not some secret acronym.) I come to all this with a wealth of experience, the likes of which the current generation knows little about. Let me explain - and definitely listen closely!
I'm really a techie - I was a math major in college, and a system's programmer in the early 1970's, troubleshooting and debugging - the programmer's programmer, poring through printouts of computer hexadecimal code (0-9, A-F). I've handled keypunch cards, and seen personal computers that had no display screen, just printed output. I taught my children's classmates to write simple graphic programs in Basic programming language. So I'm no novice - and I don't shy away from a computer challenge. But there's more.
When I watched the moon landing in July 1969 with my grandmother in her living room, we marveled that her lifetime had spanned the horse & buggy and space eras. I thought nothing could possibly top that - but I think we just have. I remember going to a friend's house to see a color TV for the first time, amazed that the NBC peacock wasn't just shades of gray. All those hours learning "touch typing" in 7th grade on a "business model" Royal typerwriter, only to need those same skills now using "all thumbs" (an expression which had a decidedly different meaning then.) And "throwing the carriage" had nothing to do with strollers. I know about slide rules, too (look that up if you think it refers to baseball maneuvers) - I guess every generation has its own geek gear. No MP3 players then, just records (78, 45, 33 1/3) - giving way to tapes, hi-fi, stereo, transistor radios. Calculators came next, with the fanciest having "memory." And I navigated all of this technology, of course, hearing the lo-tech way, with regular ears (for better and worse) - my original equipment. Now they're bionic!
How can you TRULY appreciate the tech boom we're experiencing now if you don't know what came before? There's no substitute for having BEEN THERE. It is my pleasure to supply that perspective.
I'm lumped into that younger techno geek generation, but there's still a lot I don't even do. I don't have my life on my cell phone. I've never touched a Wii. I don't even use an iPod.
ReplyDeleteTechnology has come a far way even with hearing devices. A new CI came out around the time we were making decisions for our son. We went with it...the Nucleus 5. It wouldn't have been available if he had been implanted a few years earlier.
Great blog!!!