,â Maude again demands, her tone less musical, more Mussolini.
My (long deceased) grandparents, born before Philo T. Farns-worthâs groundbreaking gadget, didnât watch Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Murder, She Wrote on weekend nights because they enjoyed programs with strong female protagonists and commas in the title; those shows just happened to be on when I was staying there. They watched television all the time because, on some level, they were amazed that such technology existed. If you stop and think about it, TV is a marvelâa miracle, reallyâunthinkable to, say, Napoleon, who was chilling on Elba a mere two centuries ago, a blink of an eye in the history of humankind. My mother has a similar if less reverential relationship with the VCR (already usurped by the DVD player). You can watch movies without going to the cinema! You can tape shows, and watch them again! You can fast-forward through the commercials! This sense of astonishment explains why she and Frank, her husband, rent so many egregiously crappy movies (their Netflix queue is unspeakable). I feel the same awe toward the home computer, my portal to the wonderful World Wide Web. At thirty-six, Iâm old enough to remember when computers were not ubiquitous, when correspondence was done by post, when classifieds and want ads were the primary means of communicating for-sale items and job openings and potential romantic encounters, when news came in fixed cycles, when the telephone call was not an anachronism, when you had to stop at a gas station to ask for directions, when you had to listen to the radio to hear that hit song you couldnât get out of your head. Those analog days are gone. TiVo, Craigslist, Gmail, Facebook, GPS, YouTube, iTunes, and CNN.com have made moot the need to wait. Almost anything I wish to know can be found out in minutes, if not seconds, with a few keystrokes and mouse clicks. That actress looks familiar; what else has she been in? IMDB will tell me. What is Tupac saying in the last part of âHit âem Upâ? A snippet in the Google search bar reveals the garbled lyrics (âMy fo-fo make sho all yo kids donât growâ). And if I want to compare âWe Are the Worldâ with âDo They Know Itâs Christmas,â or revisit old SNL sketches, or listen to new bands before investing in the album, YouTubeâs got the hook-up. To me, this is wonderful, in the pure sense of the word; the novelty might never wear off completely. But Roland and Maude have never known a different world. At a momentâs notice, they can watch what they want to watch, hear what they want to hear, read what they want to read, and the longest delays they have to endure are the (interminable) menu intros on the Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs. âAgain!â Maude will demand when Little Bear ends, and I have to tell her that itâs regular television, not DVR, and therefore I cannot process her request. Which of course she doesnât understand. Technology that seems magical to me is the norm for Roland and Maude, horse-and-buggy stuff, coal-powered machines. Our society places a premium on not wasting time . Almost every technological breakthrough in the last century is just another milestone in our eternal quest for instant, if not perpetual, gratification. Brave new world, indeed. How can I teach children born into such a you-snooze-you-lose world the virtue and value of patience? Iâm not sure if I understand it myself.
Leaving the magazine next to the his-and-hers bottles of Tums on the vanity, I go downstairs, fire up another Max & Ruby , check on the progress with breakfastâRolandâs eaten most of his bagel, Maude half of hersâand retreat to the bathroom to try again to shower. I need to shaveâMaude told me so last nightâso Iâll be in there a good ten minutes. With any luck, they wonât kill each other while Iâm indisposed. Or if they do, it
My (long deceased) grandparents, born before Philo T. Farns-worthâs groundbreaking gadget, didnât watch Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Murder, She Wrote on weekend nights because they enjoyed programs with strong female protagonists and commas in the title; those shows just happened to be on when I was staying there. They watched television all the time because, on some level, they were amazed that such technology existed. If you stop and think about it, TV is a marvelâa miracle, reallyâunthinkable to, say, Napoleon, who was chilling on Elba a mere two centuries ago, a blink of an eye in the history of humankind. My mother has a similar if less reverential relationship with the VCR (already usurped by the DVD player). You can watch movies without going to the cinema! You can tape shows, and watch them again! You can fast-forward through the commercials! This sense of astonishment explains why she and Frank, her husband, rent so many egregiously crappy movies (their Netflix queue is unspeakable). I feel the same awe toward the home computer, my portal to the wonderful World Wide Web. At thirty-six, Iâm old enough to remember when computers were not ubiquitous, when correspondence was done by post, when classifieds and want ads were the primary means of communicating for-sale items and job openings and potential romantic encounters, when news came in fixed cycles, when the telephone call was not an anachronism, when you had to stop at a gas station to ask for directions, when you had to listen to the radio to hear that hit song you couldnât get out of your head. Those analog days are gone. TiVo, Craigslist, Gmail, Facebook, GPS, YouTube, iTunes, and CNN.com have made moot the need to wait. Almost anything I wish to know can be found out in minutes, if not seconds, with a few keystrokes and mouse clicks. That actress looks familiar; what else has she been in? IMDB will tell me. What is Tupac saying in the last part of âHit âem Upâ? A snippet in the Google search bar reveals the garbled lyrics (âMy fo-fo make sho all yo kids donât growâ). And if I want to compare âWe Are the Worldâ with âDo They Know Itâs Christmas,â or revisit old SNL sketches, or listen to new bands before investing in the album, YouTubeâs got the hook-up. To me, this is wonderful, in the pure sense of the word; the novelty might never wear off completely. But Roland and Maude have never known a different world. At a momentâs notice, they can watch what they want to watch, hear what they want to hear, read what they want to read, and the longest delays they have to endure are the (interminable) menu intros on the Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs. âAgain!â Maude will demand when Little Bear ends, and I have to tell her that itâs regular television, not DVR, and therefore I cannot process her request. Which of course she doesnât understand. Technology that seems magical to me is the norm for Roland and Maude, horse-and-buggy stuff, coal-powered machines. Our society places a premium on not wasting time . Almost every technological breakthrough in the last century is just another milestone in our eternal quest for instant, if not perpetual, gratification. Brave new world, indeed. How can I teach children born into such a you-snooze-you-lose world the virtue and value of patience? Iâm not sure if I understand it myself.
Leaving the magazine next to the his-and-hers bottles of Tums on the vanity, I go downstairs, fire up another Max & Ruby , check on the progress with breakfastâRolandâs eaten most of his bagel, Maude half of hersâand retreat to the bathroom to try again to shower. I need to shaveâMaude told me so last nightâso Iâll be in there a good ten minutes. With any luck, they wonât kill each other while Iâm indisposed. Or if they do, it
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