Hi, All.
What originally prompted me to start Aging in the Digital Age was the extraordinary lives those of us who are 65+ have lived, and I wanted to discuss both the positives and the negatives of our collective experience. Had the post I’m including in this post been written last summer, I would have put it in my first post because it covers so much of how I was feeling about the unique, drastic societal change that the current older generation has lived through and how we have adapted to it (or not). And I was interested in how you are feeling about the unique changes that you have had to adjust to.
A piece that elegantly describes the trajectory of our lives was posted on Facebook and copied into many Facebook posts. It’s long, so I’m not going to put it here, but I’m pasting the url for it (see “click here” below). The one thing it omitted is the change in the status of women, gender reassignment, and robots. That change has had a huge impact on our lives and how we will live in a future that seems to be accelerating faster with each day.
I hope you will read it and give me your take on it. For example, how does the piece make you feel about our generation? Has it changed your feeling about being older? Are there things that were important in our analog lives that continue to be important now? What occurs to you after reading it? Etc.
Happy April
Julie
3 Responses
I can’t help but feel that it’s a great loss to move into a world of digital, lightning-fast communication that we can barely digest before another bit comes into view. And now with AI here, I fear there will be less and less study of great thinkers, less and less pondering; wondering; sharing and discussing of ideas
–practices that, in my view, are essential to wisdom.
I fear that also, Lyn, but a couple of days ago, I read that young people are now beginning to return to books and limiting screen time. They seem to have caught on to some of the hazards of living in our cyber world. I do worry that it’s too little, too late. I’m certainly not seeing any kind of awakening in students. In fact, this week, a student turned in an essay that AI did for her that she then put through a program to make it read more like a real student’s writing. The problem was that instead of copying and transferring the report to a blank screen when she turned it in, she submitted the “perfect” manuscript she paid the company to do, complete with its logo and slogan boasting its ability to fool teachers. The dumbing down of our youth is staggering.
At 82, I can say that I miss many things from my generation including strong friendships and a sense of moral courage. The rush of technology including AI are not for me even though we all get a dose daily. My days of old remain cherished and the future uncertain, but we have always provided bandaids rather than solutions until bandaids no longer hold the tides of change.
PS from Edutopia comes news that some schools are removing Chrome books and screens in favor of our old tradition of keeping hand-written notebooks with drawings to illustrate our concepts. It reports that when personal computer screens entered classrooms, the national scares took a downward turn. ’nuff said!