We Don’t Talk Anymore

I don’t know if it has something to do with technology advances or a matter of generation gap. But I suspect it is the former, for I am as usual, a cool daddy. And cool daddy usually can do virtually everything that you may care to imagine in this world. I must have met my Waterloo when I ‘hit the wall’ and ran out of ideas. I have been trying since last night and I tried, exhaustively, all means to copy a song out of a CD. I am not in the habit of making pirate copy but to save the convenience of putting a CD every time I want to listen to the dreadful song, 别问我是谁.

Contented that I lacked the technology advances, or to put it bluntly, nearing techno illiteracy, I SOSed my daughter for help. Melody don’t talk to me the way she would when she was a toddler, we now ‘chat’ over SKYPE or MSN. In other words our relationship is distanced by the advancement of technologies. We don’t talk, we merely type. And after a few liners, she discovers her cool daddy is some 100 giga minutes behind advancements, she stopped the entire chat. “Wait, I will prepare a PowerPoint to show you the correct way”, she said. A PowerPoint? I don’t want to sound negative but is there any feeling in this fast lane of changing time anymore? Anyway, this is what she came up in just under 3 minutes.

Whilst I may think this is cool way to teach an “illiterate dad”, I believe the real danger is not that computers will begin to think like man, but that man will begin to think like computers. My daughter clearly not being an exception. I remember reading an article saying “I like my new telephone, my computer works just fine, my calculator is perfect, but Lord, I miss my mind!” Technology can be very seductive, and it is certainly changing the way things are designed, made and taught. The problem arises when technology has seduced you away from thinking about things as deeply as you should.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means from going backwards. That being the case, I rather junked my desk-top……now can we talk, Melody?