re your blog. Yes, I do read it!

My mother, Carolyn, sent me the following e-mail in response to my blog commentaries on the changing world of teens and text. It was eloquently written with some unspoken insights that I thought worthy of publication. The world of fallen technology that she envisions is, I suspect, a long way off and not what teens of the immediate future would find relevant, but her points are surely worth adding to the debate. I think everybody should watch the movie Wall-E after reading this.

Your latest entry, What is the Meaning of Life/Text? was interesting. The main problem I have with all the technology is that kids, and people in general, are getting so removed from nature and face-to-face dialogue that they are not learning the nuances of the world outside their other forms of communication. Nature has its own language, and pacing, and by not keeping connected to it we lose our sense that we are part of a greater whole (ie the earth and natural forces) and forget that we are part of that life-web. We are as much influenced by the pull of the moon, by vagaries of weather, by changes of hormones, by seasons, etc. We also communicate without words, but like the whales whose language is drowned out by the sounds of boat motors, and so is not being passed on to their offspring, we lose the skill of reading facial expressions if we spend our time looking at screens. I rather suspect that parts of our brains which have evolved to recognize and interpret these signals from other people and nature are becoming shrunken, and no longer function as well as they used to. Those societies which still survive by living off the land retain these skills, and in the end, when we are no longer an oil-dependent world but have to go back to living off the land, growing our own food for our survival instead of importing it from somewhere else, those people who have practiced these survival skills will be better off than the ones who are highly skilled at using technology. The horse-whisperers will have the right instincts, and the practised patience to achieve what needs to be done, while those whose expectations for "instant-everything" will have a harder struggle.

To get back to the subject of books - there is still nothing more satisfying to me than to curl up in bed with a good book. I don't know if a laptop would be as satisfying, or one of those Kindle books, even if it allows the sensation of page-turning. There is just something about the feel (and even the smell) of a paper book that is hard to duplicate. For me it has the potential of having my favourite pages marked in some way so I can go back to them (or, horrors, photocopied, even if that goes against the rules) so I can apply something pertinent to another context.

Anyway, interesting commentary. I don't know how to make a comment on your blog because when I tried, it wants me to be a member or fellow blogger or something - none of my comments show up.

Love, Mom