As a System Engineer in the IT industry, it is my job to stay up with the latest technology – sometimes I muse; “they actually pay me to do this….Wow”. Well recently I attended a conference on Cyberinfluence – a fancy word for how the latest information technology affects our world. I had previously had a conversation with my son about this and this conference validated some of my feelings… First, let me go on the record by saying that the Internet (i.e., Web 2.0) is not the “Spawn of Satan” and the technology has its uses. However, as with everything innovative and only understood by a select few, it has its good, bad, and ugly sides. I think that it is not the technology but the application of it that is sometimes silly and misleading (especially to those who do not know who they are). Our current age is one of confusion and rapid application of everything - and it is not only IT. For example, it is difficult just to buy a bag of popcorn kernels (you know- those you pop yourself – without using the Microwave).
Last week, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who was worried that his daughter spent an inordinate time texting her friends. Outside of the obvious financial concerns, his fear was that she was losing her contact with the family. I can not comment on that but I thought it was no more unusual for the teenager of this generation than it was for the teenagers of previous generations to spend hours on the telephone… The difference now is that that today’s teenager has the technology to sit at the dinner table and text their friends and you don’t know what he/she is saying. What I was more concerned about is “texting” in general – or more to the point, the “dumbing – down” of the written word to a form of written Ebonics that has made its way into our colleges
Monday, August 6, 2007
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