Lots of people believe that progress is a never-ending line that angles ever upward, and they then are glad to live in that world, in which day by day, we are able to avail ourselves of even more tools or better devices that seem to make our lives easier and more satisfying. Yet, it has to be said that just because we have digital this and digital that, we don’t necessarily always get at the same time, a situation in which by having digital books, digital newspapers, digital magazines, digital clocks, and digital word processors, that our lives are thus always clearly better, in whole.
For instance, life presents us with the opportunity for many of us, to learn a lot from our parents, or our grandparents, in which, because there are a plentitude of people that are quite older than we are, we can call upon their experiences to help aid us in the present in the figuring out of life and of particular concerns that are pertinent to us. One of those things, that interests those that are the curious sort, is that we have a strong tendency to kind of want to know what makes a particular parent or grandparent, tick, of which, one of the ways that we are able to do so, is to pick up those things of theirs such as a book, or a magazine, or a newspaper that they have been reading, or, to turn back the clock even further, to be by the typewriter, and view the pages of what they have written. Indeed, we can learn a lot about someone else, by knowing what they read, but when there aren’t any physical books for us to pick up, or magazines, or newspapers, we become somewhat clueless about what our parents or grandparents think and ponder upon, for we have no or little physical clues to actually follow.
Look, it has to be said, if young children, want to play “grown up” by putting on their mother’s lipstick, or by sitting down in their father’s “smoking chair,” then there also is something lost, when we aren’t able to take the whole process further, by knowing what our parents actually like to read or to write, and when we don’t have access to those very things, we are lesser for that. Our parents and grandparents are guideposts, designed for the purpose, to help us navigate through the difficulties and challenges of life, and those that respect their elders, have an interest in trying to emulate them, and part of the process of doing so, is in that imitation of them.
So then, the proximate problem with all of the personal digital devices that we currently have, is the fact that these devices as in an iPhone, are specific to one person, and none other, so unless we are peaking over another person’s shoulder, we only know that they are doing something with their device, but we don’t know exactly what that is, and because we don’t know that, we lose that personal connection. Indeed, the days of the family all watching the same television program together, appear to be long gone – so too, the days of us picking up our parent’s magazine or book to know what they are reading and perhaps to have a conversation about such, seldom exists, either – and because of that our connections one to another, are diminishing.