Monday, January 12, 2009

Conversation with elderly man in cafe

Old Man: "How do you like your computer?"
Cos: "I hate it, haha"
"Yeah? I love my mac book air"
~"I like the machine, I just don't like what it does to me, you know?"
"Yeah! I had this problem with my printer, I have a kodak printer and i installed the 10.2.5 update and the thing no longer runs with it!"
~"Yeah... they're fragile"
"I gave two computers to my grandsons for christmas, and when they came to visit i didn't see them for a whole weekend, haha"
~*nod* "haha"
"They just played on the computers! They love it!"
~"Well that's the problem I'm talking about, I hate these things" *pats laptop*
"Well yeah I carried my macbook air over here and it didn't feel like it weighed a thing!"
~"yeap"
*walking away* "and my grandsons said to me, 'grandpa for an old geezer you're the coolest!'"
~"hahaha!"

Cool.

The greatest generation handing out laptops like lead-painted toys to so many blind nintoddlers. Maybe if grandpa played WoW with them and limited it to a few hours... I'd be less cynical. Hey grandpa: Who plays a board game for an entire weekend? Why can't anyone moderate themselves with these things?

But he doesn't know any better, he can't. In his day they fought a real enemy and played with very real death penalties.

Now we fight digital Nazis just to feel ______.

I'm concerned about the lack of guidance being offered from our tribal elders regarding digital technology. Tell the kids to turn it off...

Why can't I?

-Cos

2 comments:

Doc said...

The problem lies not in our Macs but in our selves; that we lack discipline.

Maggie said...

I think the problem lies in people who create these machines knowing that they will make a profit from it... people who create game stations, etc don't necessarily do it out of pure passion -- it's usually driven by external desires, materialistic desires. And when that happens, they are only concerned about the consequences as it applies to their lives (i.e. Jobs and Wozniak) and not those who might be affected by them. At the same time, I suppose caring about the 'benefactors' of their creation (namely strangers to the creators) would be a supererogatory act so maybe it is just a lack of self discipline/control.