I go through this all the time, Marda. I think I'm so up-to-date with my computer skills, etc., and then I come up against students and even one of my daughters who are light years beyond me in terms of their PDAs, Tivos, fancy phones that do everything but the laundry, etc. I could not have imagined the conveniences technology provides.

I was just now thinking about how awestruck I still am when I can receive a letter meant for someone in Japan, write him via email to ask what he wants, scan it into a PDF he can then read and have it all solved within minutes. If it had been even just twenty years ago, I would've just forwarded it on to him via airsnail mail and it probably would've taken weeks to get to him. Minutes? Wow technology.

I like your song.

Oh, yeah! Us old codgers can look back and remember how it was.....and it will just about blow our minds.

Right now, the DH and our eldest are playing World of Warcraft on the computers. The son is in Atlanta. They talk, fight the same creatures, walk the same paths, see the same things, interact as if they were sitting shoulder to shoulder in the same room instead of being about 500 miles apart. AND, the best of the best is that they can do the same with others all over the world. The miles and oceans have no meaning. Of course, it's just a silly game, but it is a means of communication with a friend or relative that never existed a few years ago.

"Reach out and touch someone" has a whole new meaning.

It's pretty amazing that now you can sit down at a computer,
type in the name of something you want to buy, compare prices, order and pay for it without leaving the room.

Yeah Jan,but then what about that UPS thing that keeps happening to you? I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you this year.

There are so many implications about technology, it's hard to know which one to address. I see it as a dichotomy. For each goody you see and you want, you must trade away something you already have, never to be seen again.

To put it as succinctly as I can, it's turned modern life into a self-service ballpark. Survival even at the most basic level is determined by how well one can interpret a menu. Everything has a menu now from your bathroom scales to the voice mail at the emergency numbers of your power company.

When I went back to school last year, I found that the entire process from enrolling/paying fees/choosing courses/getting grades/looking at next year's courses not only COULD be done without interacting with a human........it was expected to be done that way. I was no longer a human, but a pin number. God help anyone who wanted to deviate from a prescribed menu, however. I am still getting mail from said university in my maiden name, under which I hadn't attended any school since 1965. There is no human on Campus who is not a "specialist" and can do anything without putting you in contact with another specialist who is never there, but has voice mail with a menu.

Everything in one's life now must fall within the criteria of a coded service or product. If it cannot be described to a computer what you want or need, it's unattainable. Life is now fragmented into bits and bytes.

LOL Marda! That's what happens when old technology bumps up against the new.

I have a hard time sometimes remembering what it was like before we had some of our modern pieces of technology. The big thing, of course, is the computer. I don't know what I'd do without it & when it goes on the blink.

I do admit to being a troglodyte about some of the newer gadgets though, primarily because of my aversion to reading the documentation. The biggest thing is my cell phone. It can do everything but stand on its head & whistle Dixie, but all I can do is to send & end a call.

Um, we can program your cell phone to whistle Dixie.

Co-worker has her phone programed to play Sweet Home Alabama. The full version, not some monphonic tones.

I was thinking of this just the other day.

In the same vein as your post Marda, you mentioned Röyksopp many months ago. I went online and ordered two of their CD's, which I love!

I post a lot of photos on flickr. I comment on the work of, and have had comments on my own from photographers all around the world. I found it particularly interesting when I posted a photograph of the letter M that I took at a company picnic. There are tools on the web that allow people to spell words with letter images pulled from flickr. There is now a library in California that is using my M in their online announcement about MORE HOURS. What was also amazing was that not only could I shoot that photo, upload it and have it seen around the world, but I was able to search and find people who used it on their own sites...

Suzy. You make many interesting points. Another thought is that in our culture many people are cut off from others -the elderly, handicapped and mentally ill to name a few. While computers can and do help connect people who might otherwise lack connection with others, it is also hastening the disconnect for people who for financial or other reasons don't have access to computers.

"Reach out and touch someone"... But they aren't!

'Tis a world of difference between playing a game or writing IM's compared to literally being able to touch someone. No IM yet can transmit a giggle or any other emotion with the same effect as being face-to-face.

There has always been a gap between the literate and the not-so-literate, and the gap is seen in lack of accessibility to the method of communicating. What we see now are other gaps... caused by those who chose to be computer-illiterate as well as caused by those who cannot comprehend other than computer literacy.

I always try to consider just what the worth is of a computer crashed by a 'virus' or non-working due to no electricity. And I'm sorry for those who have learned to only communicate by IM as well as those who have never learned to entertain themselves without the aid of electricity -- they are in the same strata as those who think hamburger grows between styrofoam and plastic film.

Marda, it was FedEx, not UPS although, Ups did mess up
once on a pair of shoes I ordered.

Which reminds me, I had forgotten about having to buy Christmas presents, sheesh.

Beanmomma, I caught part of a program recently about the autistic and how many are able to communicate via computers. Amazing to see their faces as they typed what they couldn't convey through speaking. Most beneficial was being able to correspond with other autistics.

So interesting about your letter "M"...I myself have sent/received seeds and cuttings to faraway places, plus garden book swaps...most due to a casual post here or on another garden site. To receive a box of strange seedpods from Australia...what a thrill.

Meldy, I do feel "touched" by posts here and elsewhere...perhaps from my years of reading I can empathize with emotions sometimes more readily thru the written word than perhaps in person. This is no doubt my failing, but I feel uncomfortable in some emotional conversations face to face. I myself often write what I can't say...I think many of us here probably keep journals. It helps sort out my thoughts. Perhaps the computer is a boon to some in that way...we wouldn't join in as readily in a conversation in real life...particularly in a large group. Here we can add our 2 cents ...and not worry about the glazed eyeball and the scroll button...LOL

I'd give up my clothes dryer and dishwasher, even more readily cable tv, before I'd give up my Webtv...lol Cellphone is just in case...we take it into garden or to mailbox with us. Everyone of us probably adapts the new technology to our wants and needs...I don't use much of it but I'm awfully glad it's available. josh

Josh, I think all of us posting here have a full other-life, which involves much face-to-face communication and direct interaction with other humans.

However, I am appalled at the number of children I see who can't seem to walk without either a headset or some electronic gadget held to the ear. Not so long ago, it used to be that in any setting with young ones, one could easily count those who were electronically connected to elsewhere, now it's easier to note the few who not. To me, IPods and cellphones and online games played for hours and hours are doing more to alienate our children from real life than even TV ~ and I've ranted enough about the harm TV is doing to young minds, that nothing more need be said.

I enjoy computers and similar gadgets, but I'm careful to limit how much of my free time is spent with them. Hopefully, I'll never think ((~)) is a real hug.

I am so much closer to my family and friends because of the computer. We have lived all over the United States and I have family and friends,lots of them,in Connecticut,California,Alabama,Texas,Illinois,and Florida. In the past I'd send cards at holidays of course and write letters once in a great while and call when I thought I'd be able to get hold of them and vice versa. Way too many people to write and call every month or so. Now,I'm in constant touch with all of them, via email and it's wonderful to be able to communicate so frequently and be closer emotionally than we ever have before. Modern technology is like anything else new that comes down the pike..either the glass is half full or half empty and I'm a half fuller . Everything in the world except cheesecake has it's plus side and minus side and you can either enjoy the good for the most part or piss and moan about the bad. Look at all the problems civilization has had with the advent of electricity. Families used to gather around the fire and read,sew or just contemplate. We've gone to Hell in a handbasket because of Edison. Right?

Meldy, I'm not sure about others but I purposely lead a quiet retired life, and definitely enjoy it. But I do love the GP because for a little while I can peek into other lives and concerns, savor the quote, laugh or sympathize at any time of day/night. If I didn't have access I'd no doubt be reading more or hanging out at library/bookstores again, not necessarily seeking out real live folks to interact with...LOL

When I was a kid I used to be told to "put down that book and look around", as we traveled across the U.S. (And I'll admit that now I wish I had listened and looked more). My older sister was often reading. too, or sketching comic book characters. There are always kids who are outgoing and sociable and other kids who are not...including those who hide out in garages and create strange technological gizmos for us all....LOL
I'm with Marda...I think the glass is half full. josh

I'm at work right now, analyzing our organization's current web site menu so that it can be re-done correctly. I needed a quick distraction to re-set my brain and approach the problem from anew. I just clicked onto this thread and read it for the first time. Suzy, your menu comments really struck me. I'm annoyed with ours because the outline isn't constructed in a parallel fashion... but in order to redesign it intelligently, I'm also analyzing over a year's worth of traffic patterns so that I can see high-volume entry points and reduce the number of clicks for the majority of our visitors... while still keeping the menu logical enough for the "deviants." Sheesh! Lot's of food for thought here... Keep talking so I can eavesdrop while I mull my proposal over...

I drop a line or two to the out-of-towners far more often than I would if I had to write a letter and stick a stamp on the envelope.

I have always hated to write letters, Terrible handwriting and I have a spelling disability. Email checks my spelling for me. In a letter, there would be a dozen or so scratched out words.

This world is a blessing for families that are scattered. I even zap off things to the kids in town.

What are those little thingies that I see that people have hooked and screwed into their ears? Music? Phone? I saw a well dressed attractive woman in the store today....and then she turned her head and I saw that dumb looking thing. That says something for first impressions being untrustworthy, doesn't it!!!

I am very optimistic to see a company put somebody like you in the position of refining a menu, Michelle. Menus don't rattle me, but they need some sort of logic and need to be designed to be interpreted by the target audience.

I have been in touch with a certain company off and on for the last seven months regarding some very important and time sensitive issues. I give them at least an eight out of ten points for competency. Thank God for that, because we are trying to problem solve issues another office has botched up so royally, I'd like to give them the Darwin Award of the year. I did receive a letter from the "good company" however and it was three business pages long. It was logical and well written but in the last paragraph the author summed up the disposition of the material in question and it told me Nothing. That prompted a call to another agent and he agreed with me it was three wasted pages of mail and he used the phrase "euphemism" when he described the terms she used, and said that informational letters needed to be written in terms the recipient could understand and not a company's jargon.

I was a technogeek in those early years of my life, before I dropped off the world, and force myself to keep at least a little current on communiciation advances, but my poor husband who is ten years my senior will not make a phone call where he has to make menu choices. It's another job delegated to me. sigh.

I have often wondered if daddy and I would have a different relationship if email had existed during the VietNam war. I hated him being overseas and waiting an eternity for letters. I often think how wonderful it must be for the children of soldier's currently serving to be able to see videos of their parents. I am a little jealous, but I certainly am glad they don't have to wonder constantly like I did. Email would certainly have reached out and touched me then... at least I'm pretty sure.

And it certainly does now. I can email my boss sitting in a meeting in D.C. who suddenly gets an email his meeting is canceled in NJ and hightail it to a phone to get him on a flight home before the ice hit there. We laughed hard about the scrambling going on and he could tweak his flight right then. He's over Kentucky right now (saw it on Flightview) and will land about the time I get home (Flight Stats). What would've happened had he not been email connected? He'd be sitting a closed airport wishing he had somewhere to stay!!!

Please don't take the following comments as being anti technology. Rather they are an amateur historian's concern about leaving a record for future historians to be able to access.

For years I've saved almost all snail mail correspondence I've received from friends & family (I currently have a trunk & several boxes full of this stuff). My hope has always been that one of my friends or relative will become famous & his or her biographer will come sniffing around wanting to read the letters I've saved. In my fantasy i will then be preserved as a footnote in history ("The author wishes to thank Andie Rathbone for the generous access she has given to her private papers")

All very nice, but these days, unless people are saving their emails, there will be no trail for future biographers & historians to access.

Folks have probably been complaining about technology since someone invented the wheel, Galileo noted that the earth moves around the sun, and Leonardo Da Vinci drew the first airplane. There are, of course, downsides to every new development. But on the whole, I am genuinely impressed by and fond of new stuff. Sometimes I wish I knew more about it and could use it more effectively and efficiently.

That said, I do think that technology allows me to stay in touch, on a regular basis, with many people with whom I would otherwise rarely communicate. I don't even give my students my office phone number because I require that they communicate with me exclusively by e-mail--that means we can write to each other at 3 in the morning (them to me) and at 6 in the morning (me to them) or any time of day that is convenient for either of us. If we tried to do this in real time, the connections would be infinitely harder to make. Small example I know, but it demonstrates the ways in which technology has altered so many of the things I do.

Andie, it seems that stuff on the internet never really disappears. But I agree that it's not as much fun scrounging around on a hard drive as it reading Wordsworth's endless poetic revisions in whatever library they are held.