When waiting at the bus
stop to go into town, it is interesting to listen to the various
conversations. There is one particular elderly
gentleman who regularly gets the same bus as me and his conversation is usually
on the same topic - modern technology, computers in particular. He really doesn't have a good word to say
about them. He certainly doesn't want
one and couldn't see himself ever owning one.
Then I started wondering what my life would be like without one! I would have to keep calling in at the bank
or Post Office to pay my bills and organise my accounts. I wouldn't be able to shop online as I do
now. And I wouldn't have a number of
new-found friends that I now have through blogs and Facebook. It would be more expensive and take longer to
keep in touch with family and friends that are scattered throughout the world. He couldn’t imagine himself with a pc but
actually I couldn't imagine myself without one.
It is so useful and helpful for so many things.
This afternoon I caught
up with a programme I recorded from last evening about the House That the 50s
Built. It is a series of four programmes
that compares what a house would have looked like in 1950 and how it would look
10 years on as it reached the end of the decade. This week's episode was all about the
kitchen. It echoed a conversation I had
with my son only the other day when I told him that when I was a girl we didn't
have television or washing machines or fridges (let alone freezers). Working class people could not afford to have
a telephone or central heating. It was
the decade when plastic and melamine became available, when a new drug called penicillin
was introduced and gadgets like the automatic kettle, the toaster, the pressure
cooker and the food mixer became known.
I remember my mother buying her first vacuum cleaner and non-stick pans
were introduced ... ... and I could go on.
The thing is, looking
back to 'the good old days', I don't think they were that good really. So I welcome new technology, although it
might take me a while to get the hang of it all! Or as one lady in the bus queue commented, ‘Well
we now live in the 21st century and things are different, so he’d
better get used to it!’
3 comments:
We were talking about the differences from when we were younger to now this week too. We were watching The Good Life and trying to think of the differences and wondering what a new generation would notice. Mobile phones would be an obvious one and computers, but most changes are superficial for instance cars look different and tvs are bigger and thinner.
Like you though I can't imagine being without a computer now. We wouldn't have met, well not easily, my children are scattered too, I work online, I study online and I research online. I would be very stuck without my computer.
Yes, I think my kids think sometimes I make it up when I say I remember life before plastic and nylon. Or as my younger son used to ask 'Do you remember the dinosaurs!'
lol - i was reading about the era when the metal bucket was invented. when the bible says about i can measure the waters in a bucket in the prophecy God is talking about great you use your modern technology and saying well you think you're so clever, look here's what i can do, you aint seen nothin yet, get used to it. :-)
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