The wonders of technology

The freedom to be excited about it

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I was on the way back from the dump today, after taking two old office chairs and an old desk that we have recently replaced. We've had quite a cathartic mini redecoration recently. Rearrangement of my son's bedroom really, I would say, because we didn't decorate, but we did move every single piece of furniture in the entire room apart from his bunk bed, and he got a new desk. And then I got inspired to do something for me as well.

We moved in here about five years ago and I always meant to decorate the the spare room. I put a folding bed in it and I think we've had people come to stay once or twice, maybe more, but the room felt like it was an afterthought. Yet I spend most of my time in here because I work from home and it is also my office. As part of my recovery from the crap of the last few years, I decided, right, now is the time to decorate it. So, I got the paint out, put the folding bed in the attic, got myself a new (gaming) chair (they are just so much more inviting to sit in than office chairs), and I'm much more comfortable now. It actually feels like my office.

But I digress. We had these two chairs and a desk left over and they've just been sitting around in the house cluttering up the place while I failed miserably to inspire interest in anyone to take them on via the local Facebook page. So, today I finally gave up on finding them a new home, and on the way back from the dump a double decker bus was going the other way. It had one of those big adverts they have on the side, and it was for a new series on Amazon Prime with Kiefer Sutherland. I wondered briefly if streaming services have their favourite actors, and then, for some reason, I wondered where Netflix was first launched, because I always got the impression that Amazon Prime was the American streaming service and Netflix was the British version - possibly because it always had BBC programs listed. I don't know, but anyway, the point is, that train of thought was then stopped in its tracks as I didn't have the information I needed to continue it. I was driving and I obviously couldn't just pick up my phone and start Googling about where Netflix was first started, which I found mildly irritating. So I started a new train of thought as I continued on my way home, about how wonderful it would be if I could just think a question and have it answered…

I am an avid reader of science fiction, when not too traumatised by life to bother reading at all. My Grandad loved it. My Mum loves it. I grew up reading it. Total flights of fancy about what places and people and technology might be there waiting for us in the future. How they might be used, what sort of issues and challenges that they might bring with them, and what opportunities. These days we are living in the science fiction I devoured when I was growing up. I still find the idea of carrying around a computer in your pocket mind boggling. Kids like my son that have grown up with this have never known any different - they take it for granted. Many adults, unfortunately, are left confused and fearful.

Every generation seems to fear the technology of their children's age. We seem to focus on the problems that new technologies and new ways of living can bring with them. When my Mum was a kid she used to have to hide underneath the bedcovers with a torch to read a book. Her parents thought that reading was a waste of time and would rot her brain. When I was growing up the same was said about TV. We only had about an hour and a half of kids TV programmes on BBC after school. The rest of the time it was adult programmes broadcast and we were expected to play. Or read a book.

With my son's generation, digital technolgy has exploded. To adults now, it feels like this is the first generation that has had such massive technical revolution, though we just have to look back at my Mum and her torch to know that isn't really true. Kids today have got video games, they've got social media, they've got YouTube, they've got access to pretty much all the information in the entire wide world via Google. The level, the scale, the speed of change is unprecedented, and confusing and terrifying to many older adults. I suspect that this is where all the fearmongering about video games and screen time and social media really comes from.

But, if we take a moment to stop being fearful, this new technology offers so many benefits. I mean when have we ever been, as a society or as individuals, so in control of the information and the knowledge that we consume? Or how and when that information is presented? No-one can afford to buy a book every time they want to find something out, though they still have their merit. Libraries only ever stock what they want to stock, and no physical library could hold every single book in the entire world. TV when I was growing up was was state funded. So you would have state funded educational programs about things that they thought you should learn about, and state funded entertainment that you were expected to be entertained by, and that was it. There was no choice, no room for curiosity or interests or humour beyond society’s current norms - you just got what you were given.

Now, we have almost limitless choice. So much opportunity to follow our own interests down rabbit holes, chasing after tenuous trains of thoughts to actually find out the information to keep those trains of thought going. I personally think that is amazing. It gives us so much more freedom to really think. And the fact that I am sitting here gazing up at the new painted walls in my office from my new comfy seat musing outloud to a tiny pocket sized computer about all this, and that this little gizmo is faithfully, if not entirely accurately, writing it all down for me - that is just mind boggling to me. The opportunities from tecnology are endless.

We need to get over this fear and suspicion that modern technology and change instills in many of us. Yes, it comes with risks. But everything in life comes with risks. There is no such thing as safe. There are no guarantees about anything. You could spend your entire life not drinking, not smoking, not doing any drugs, exercising religiously and you could still die of cancer, or from a drunk driver. You could avoid social media all your life and still get bullied relentlessly. You could avoid violence in online gaming and still be blown up by a terrorist. You could limit screen time to 30 minute a day for a lifetime and still not be able to get to sleep at night.

This constant narrative that we should try to persuade our children to focus on and be fearful of the many risks that adults can conjure in relation to digital technology is doing them a disservice. We need to be encouraging them to fully explore all the opportunities that this new technology brings - this is their world and they should feel comfortable and empowered in it. And, yes, I am speaking as a gen Xer who grew up reading about our next big change - AI (think Hal). There is no doubt that there are risks and pitfalls with digital technology, and we need to teach our kids how to navigate them in the same way we teach them about ovens being hot and traffic being dangerous. But then we need to let them be. To stop trying to censor their experience, their information, their modes of learning, their creativity, their ability to really think for themselves. So much change has already happened within my life time, yet I find myself excited to see how far we can get through the stories I read before I die. Will we colonize Mars before I pop? Solve the climate crisis and create utopia? Find life elsewhere than Earth? Our kids are the ones that will take us there, using skills they learnt on the very technology we spent their childhoods telling them were pointless and a waste of time. Whether we approve of it or not.

I can hear my dog, Zuma, snoring from the new bed that I added to my new office. I've quite enjoyed my first foray into waffling to my mini computer (phone) rather than sitting here not typing anything until I've somehow found the right words. Perhaps this approach will be less onerous and more flexible than it is to find the time to write, sit down, and expect inspiration to hit. Editing takes a different energy than creating something in the first place. One more easily slipped into. The wonders of technology.

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Meanwhile, I'm off to take the dog for a walk. Though it seems almost a shame to wake her….