Writer's Block: Pros and Cons
Mar. 5th, 2012 08:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
[Error: unknown template qotd]Every big change makes some things better and some things worse.
With the invention of the compass, we forgot how to follow the sun and the stars. That's right - once upon a time, you wanted to go somewhere, you just looked up. Sure, there's no longer problems on cloudy days nor cloudy nights, but we've forgotten how to do something so simple. A piece of our natural intelligence is gone.
People don't communicate like they used to, and I think there are ways in which it's made it worse. You can't even meet people by way of small talk anymore - everyone's too busy texting. But once upon a time, maybe they would've been too busy reading the paper, or rushing off to send a telegram. "People these days," their contemporaries muttered.
And it has made the world better, in some ways. Cultural, social and religious boundaries can be taken away completely. Nobody immediately knows what I look like, what I believe, what my bank account statement looks like, or anything else. Okay, admittedly that isn't true for a lot of people, since the internet's become less anonymous, but even so, it happens, and I think that makes the world a little better.
Do i worry we've become too reliant on technology? For now, yes. But hopefully society will be able to adapt to the new change, and I have little doubt it will, and we'll grow with it. People had to learn how to drive safely once; we can learn how to balance between only communicating via twitter and having actual conversations.
With the invention of the compass, we forgot how to follow the sun and the stars. That's right - once upon a time, you wanted to go somewhere, you just looked up. Sure, there's no longer problems on cloudy days nor cloudy nights, but we've forgotten how to do something so simple. A piece of our natural intelligence is gone.
People don't communicate like they used to, and I think there are ways in which it's made it worse. You can't even meet people by way of small talk anymore - everyone's too busy texting. But once upon a time, maybe they would've been too busy reading the paper, or rushing off to send a telegram. "People these days," their contemporaries muttered.
And it has made the world better, in some ways. Cultural, social and religious boundaries can be taken away completely. Nobody immediately knows what I look like, what I believe, what my bank account statement looks like, or anything else. Okay, admittedly that isn't true for a lot of people, since the internet's become less anonymous, but even so, it happens, and I think that makes the world a little better.
Do i worry we've become too reliant on technology? For now, yes. But hopefully society will be able to adapt to the new change, and I have little doubt it will, and we'll grow with it. People had to learn how to drive safely once; we can learn how to balance between only communicating via twitter and having actual conversations.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-06 06:03 pm (UTC)It is my peculiar lot to come from an old family.
By this I don't necessarily mean our line has been in the Americas forever--although by Canadian standards this is true, my father's distant ancestor arrived in Canada in 1636--but my relatives were old. My grandparents were born in the 1870s and 1880s. My father's oldest brother was 17 years his senior.
This means I grew up with people who had to adapt to new and scary things like electricity, running water in house and automobiles. They are scary, by the way. There have always been a lot of sheep amongst the people. If you like you can find alarmist essays and articles in newspapers when that crazy electricity was being installed in homes. That stuff was going to kill us all, you know.
Most took to it all nicely. Some had to figure out how that stuff worked before they trusted it. And a precious few never adapted at all.
My uncle by marriage could be included in the latter group. He had a huge collection of traffic tickets for the same offense; he drove too cautiously and slowly. If there was a line of traffic in our village it was because he was at the head of the line. He refused to drive faster than twenty miles and hour. He slowed way down and honked at every curve. He did hand signals and blinkers. The police spent a full year explaining he could not always drive with the flashing blinkers on. The patient tone they used with him..."Now, Leo..." is engraved in my mind.
But in a sense he was right. He never underestimated the dangers of driving. Of course he also ran the risk of being shot by a pissed off driver and he was so embarassing to ride with I only did it once.
My dad explained that this uncle learned to drive in the horse and buggy era; everything he did was designed not to frighten the horses still on the road. The problem was this was the 1960s and the horses were very rarely on the roads.
We gain and lose. We have lost quiet, for one thing. The absolute quiet of a house without the heat kicking on or the refrigerator running or a TV is hard to explain but it's very soothing to me. I suppose I'm old; I am annoyed by people with the phone continually at their ear, with those who think they drive (and walk and shop) as well with the phone as they do without. Darwinism is alive.
I am also annoyed with the spouse who is spending the rest of his life staring at the palm of his hand or more accurately the phone or tablet which allows him to watch movies AT ALL TIMES. Oh well, there's always divorce. But he's missing life as it passes by. That's a bit sad.