So, after being featured on my friend Brian's blog on several occasions, I hereby debut my own occasional ramblings.* Lucky you. *No representation is made about the quality of blog posting services offered.
Obsolescence
Particularly in the last month (with a job change, and the related 'spike' in communicating with wide variety of folks concerned about my next steps), I have become particularly away of my age/aging, specifically through my relationship to technology. I remember my grandfather talking about his first experience with a car, and my own wonder that a letter to my father regarding his college admissions reached him successfully, addressed only with his name and small town. So it shouldn't surprise me that I can gauge my own generation gap from those younger than me using gadgets and communication methods.
In presentations on diversity and social justice--focused on reminding people that their worldview (their perception and evaluation of the world around them) is relative, I have used the example with current college students that I was introduced to email late in my college career, and had to petition the dean for an account; whereas now, mere applicants to the university are given an account. Once a rare commodity, email is now given away like candy! But, I've adapted to and learned to live with (love/need) email, and smile a little at my mother's confusion between email addresses and internet URL addresses. (No I can't email you at your work's website address...) I've even warmed slightly to the cell phone I've only had 2 years, after resisting having one for many more.
But lately, folks my own age and younger are using more and more immediate systems of communicating--instant messaging on computers, and text messaging on phones. And I REALLY don't like this technology, or the "relationships" they support. I have asked people not to text me, and I call anyone who does, often without checking the message itself. I have called out students, even colleagues and superiors, who sit in class or meetings and "unobtrusively" type away on phone or Blackberry while the rest of us are conducting business. I still laud a colleague who texted our university president "enjoy the show!" as he typed furiously on his wireless device as the curtain went up on a campus theatre event.
All this to say, have I become a Luddite? A modern, higher functioning one, but one nonetheless? More likely, it means I have reached the age where I, my trends and my familiar technology are no longer the literal golden children of society. (At classroom presentation a few years ago, I challenged the students to guess where I was from, hoping to make a point presumptions made about accents and skin color. Instead, I was shocked and amused that the first answer was a matter-of-fact, "The 80s!" So the time warp is not entirely my own internal experience.)
Thus, at age 34, somewhere between my mid- and quarter-life crises, I have finally realized I'm dated. (Sadly not in the romantic interest sense, but that's another entry.) Yes, the students talk about me as one of "them"--the amusing older folks, with their quaint anachronisms (like landline phones, and a preference for them). I'm now "humored," just like my siblings and friends did for family and administrators ahead of us.
If I knew how, perhaps I could use my cell's web capability to find my own photo under "curmudgeon" in Wikipedia. I think it can do that, but don't really care to try. Humbug! (or should that be HMBG [scowling smiley]
