Technology at Warp Speed

The other day my adult, married daughter texted me from her grandmother's asking if I would teach her how to learn the technology of a typewriter. It seems that grandma had found an old typewriter and had given it to our girl. She laughed and told me she had been trying to use it for 10 minutes, had typed one line that contained four errors and no idea what to do next.

I replied that you either start all over or use the crappy white-out stuff that makes your work look like a bad make-up job. Several LOL's and texts later, she seriously wanted a lesson from me when she visits later this week. When I texted back "imagine writing a 150 page paper on one of those?", she replied that she has a whole new appreciation for me.

I'm valued! I'm valued! I'm truly valued! Being asked to share my expertise of the non-tech days at long last is a parenting milestone.

Sure, I told my then four-year-old girl watching a VIDEO that when I was little, movies were only in movie theaters and you could only see then once unless you paid to watch it again.

I told that same girl that when I was little and you wanted to change the TV channel, you got up and walked across the room to do it.

When DVDs came along ten years later, I told our son that there used to be video tapes that got tangled or stuck in the players.

We were able to pass on big sister's audio tapes to younger brother for about a year until cassette recorders became extinct.

Our son cannot imagine television without DVRs, Netflix or Roku. Every once in awhile just to drag some appreciation out of him, I remind him that when I was little, TV shows were on twice a year. Once when we knew it would be on, and once as a rerun in the summer. If you wanted to watch, you needed to stay home and watch it...or wait all summer and hope.

Don't even get me started on my first shoe-sized cell phone the weight of an anvil, or the pagers all 10-year-olds once used to have before their first phone.

A year ago I heard someone say there is more technology in an iPhone than was in the entire Apollo spacecraft that first landed on the moon!

And now I get to do a tutorial about my long suffering use of a typewriter!! Woot-woot!! I remember the piles of library books and periodicals spread out all over my desk and floor while working on research papers. Today's researcher needs only a laptop and access to Wi-Fi. With software now available, even the weakest paper can at least format well.

Today's student can produce a great-looking product yet have poor content. Yesterday's students got marked down for too many corrections on that old onion skin paper even while having good content.

Technology has made efforts less calorie-burning or milage-requiring and yields impressive formatting. Our challenge as parents and guardians is to continue to hold the bar high and encourage that good ol' true effort. It can be the best of both worlds.