Youth is Flummoxed by ... What Used to Pass for Technology

There is a rotary telephone at my family's beach house.  It is avocado green and completely epic.  I should also mention that, while we've gone through three or four cordless phones on a separate jack, that rotary phone still works just fine (well, unless you get to an automated system because clearly you can't press one or whatever).

But anyway ...

Belle is a pretty technologically savvy kid.  She knows how to operate an iPod, a television, a DVD player, a VCR (which Henry informed me that some of his high school students can't accomplish), a computer (in fact, she's pretty well-versed with PCs, which we have at home, and the Macs she uses at school), and a sno-cone machine.  

She also passed "The Moron Test" on my iPhone, which had me stymied (I was a little embarrassed ;-)).

But today, when my mother asked her to call a family friend to see if she wanted to join us for dinner, it was Belle's turn to be stymied.

She figured it out eventually, of course, but it struck me pretty deeply how this kid who can navigate touchscreens couldn't figure out how to use a telephone circa ... well, I was born in 1976, and there are pictures of me as a baby with that phone in the background.

We talk about the technological advances of this day and age, but it's unfortunate in some ways that we've sort of lost the technological wonders of the past.  I don't know if I'm just nostalgic here, or if it's worthy of concern that kids today can program computers but aren't able to gather reliable information from a book (I'm talking about when it's not all done for them, a la Wikipedia).

We had a little dinner party for Addie's graduation tonight, and her friend asked me a question (a really good question) about Harry Potter (since, according to Addie, I know everything there is to know about Harry Potter ;-)).  

I did not know the answer to this particular question (basically, "What the hell happened to Harry's paternal grandparents, who couldn't have been all that old since he was in his twenties when he was killed?"), so I did what I always do in those situations ... I took out my iPhone and Googled it.  I got the answer (which I'd tell you, except it's easy enough to Google ;-)), but I also wondered what would have happened if I hadn't found it right away.

Yeah, being me, I probably would have reread the books.

But I had to think about that for a second.  What WOULD I have done?  I can remember the days before the interwebs sliced its virtual highways around the earth, and I can remember being a pretty resourceful kid, but ... I cannot remember what, in that situation, I would have had for options.  

Scary stuff, if you think about it.

If you hand a kid a cassette tape, an Atari joystick, heck, even an EZ-Bake Oven, they'd look at you like you were crazy.  Actually, they'd look at you like Belle looked at us as she tried to figure out how to operate a rotary telephone.

Do you have any great stories about the technologically advanced youth of today being flummoxed by things that were simple to us at one point in time?  

Oh, and do you think that letting the technology that came before, that paved the way, should be forgotten?  (I mention this because I never heard of an eight-track until I was in college and was dating a guy with an eight-track player ... I thought it was the coolest thing ever and wondered why my musical scope was limited to LPs, cassettes, and CDs)

Television Hypocrisy Leads to Selective Memory Contemplation

There is no question in my mind that kids today watch too  much television.  Not a shred of doubt.  Agreed.  It's a problem.

I am also willing to admit that Belle, my precious (and precocious) eight-year-old, watches more than her share.  

What occurred to me the other day, though, is that this is not a new problem.  No, not Belle watching too much TV ... that's only been a problem for seven years or so.  But, seriously, it really is more of a universal concern.

Okay, here's what happened.  I had a stroke of ... well, brilliance is probably too strong a word, but at least it was a very telling realization.

My mother is always on me about the amount of TV Belle watches.  Like, it's a borderline serious issue between the two of us.  

I always try to point out that

1) Belle isn't a passive TV watcher.  She is almost always doing stuff while watching television.

2) The occasions when Belle does sack out in front of the TV almost always follow extensive outdoor ventures.

3) Belle is a voracious reader and would frequently rather sack out with a book than with Victorious or iCarly.

None of that cuts much dice with mi madre.

But then I remembered something--namely, the entire movie script from Labyrinth, which my siblings and I watched near-obsessively when we were kids.  And a whole list of movies scrolled through my mind--Ghostbusters, The Neverending Story, Jaws, Back to the Future, the original three Star Wars films, Spaceballs, The Goonies, The Legend of Billie Jean, Ghostbusters, Heathers, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Dark Crystal, and dozen of others.

Basically, my mother didn't seem to care as much that her own kids were watching so much television that their brains were turning to mush.

I don't write this to bash on my mom; I truly believe that first, she wants to make sure that her grandchildren have the absolute best and second, that her memory is selective with regards to this.

The fact that I can say without the shadow of a doubt that my sibs and I watched far more television than Belle does means very little in the great scheme of things.  My brother and sister don't watch TV excessively as adults, and I almost never watch TV at all.

I guess it's more the selective memory that my mother exemplified ... and the realization that I and pretty much everyone I know is guilty of that same sort of rewriting of history, if only in their minds.

Why do we lie to ourselves about things that, when push comes to shove, really don't matter at all?  And do we believe ourselves?

What's Your Guilty Pleasure on Television?

I spent much of my life completely ambivalent about television. I mean, when I was a kid I spent Saturday mornings watching cartoons with Adam and Mary, but I was never obsessed with TV like so many people are. There were so many good books to read, know what I mean?

I was student teaching when the 9/11 attacks happened (I swear this connects to the topic at hand). My class was in the library starting a project when the librarian started having hysterics and screaming, "They're bombing the White House!" I do not do well in emergency situations, and this was of course the ultimate emergency situation. When I finally got home, my stepdad was watching the news. For the first time ever, he was not able to reassure me that I was safe, that my world was going to be okay. He was the bravest person I've ever met, and he just sat on the couch watching the news unfold, his eyes glued to the TV screen. I sat with him trying to keep my anxiety attack under control; strange as this sounds, the talking heads on the screen were reassuring to me. They were people, alive and scared and knocked to their knees, just like me. I watched the news almost obsessively after that. I slept with the cable news channel on, finding what comfort I could from staying on top of the "breaking news alerts", for over a year.

As a result, television lost its repugnancy for me. I slowly but surely branched out from the news and eventually learned to sleep without the television on, but I had become used to the TV as a means of relaxation, of coping with stress. I found that not all television was mindless drivel, that there was some stuff on the boob tube that could actually make me think and help me learn.

I'm not going to pretend that I watch all educational television, although I spend a disproportionate amount of time on the History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery (I adore Shark Week), and PBS (I think "Antiques Roadshow" is amazing). I never got into reality TV--I'm one of the few people I know that have never seen a single episode of either "Survivor" or "American Idol" or anything in between. Nope, I found my niche with the crime/drama/detective/courtroom shows. I enjoy the "Law and Order" shows, the "CSI" shows, things like that.

My ultimate guilty pleasure on television, though, is "NCIS", a show about Naval investigators. There are always twists that leave me guessing until the very end, the characters are incredibly rich (despite the outward shallowness of some of them), and the show does not take the easy road like many seem to. The line between good guy and bad guy blurs, the lead character deals with stress by building boats and drinking bourbon in his basement in a manner both tragically sad and eminently real, and the show sends the message that there is a place in the world for everyone to succeed. For some reason, watching an episode of "NCIS" gives me a level of pleasure that, in the past, I've only experienced when in the grip of an unbelievably good book.

So what are your thoughts on television? What is/are your favorite show(s)? Why? What role does television play in your life? Do you think there's a point of too much TV-watching? I worry as a teacher that my students spend too much time watching television (and playing video games, but don't even get me started on the V.G. word). What do you think?