Facebook

I know this is pretty random, but I really like Facebook. I have been thinking a lot about technology. Not even considering the advancements since I have been alive, I was talking to my grandson about the advancements that were made since HIS dad was born in 1973. Of particular interest to Wyatt were the video games. Remember pong? If you do, you are giving away your age. Atari was an incredibly primitive system compared to the video games of today, but you'd have thought my son had died and gone to heaven when we got our first system. I think he was about 10...

And video tapes. To say that video recordings are an improvement today would be a gross understatement. I think every one of them we ever had ended up in the garbage as the tape split one too many times. We even would take them apart and "splice" them with scotch tape, but that got pretty old after a while.

I also lived in the time of 8 track tapes which led to the cassette tape which had a pretty long run. I can remember being at my aunt's house one time, and she had a reel to reel player which was the forerunner of the 8 track tape. Talk about labor intensive. Of course, all the home movies were on reels as well, and that went well into my high school years and beyond.

Of course those were simpler days. I don't even know what was on television during the day because we NEVER watched daytime TV. I think they had game shows and soap operas, but we didn't watch it. If we were home, we were studying or playing outside or reading. Those are all three foreign concepts for children today. Most of the students in our school had no idea how to study when they came to us, and many of them are unable to read with any degree of proficiency when we get them. The math and communication skills of our nation's children are shockingly inadequate for ANY job, no less for the kinds of jobs needed to keep a country going.

Every presidential year, I think how sad it is that we are producing a nation full of citizens who don't know how to think. Of course, when one doesn't think, one is unable to reason. That can be very dangerous if the unthinking, unreasoning individual decides to cast his unthoughtful, unreasonable ballot. I wonder how the founding fathers would feel if they saw the campaign commercials being run that are directed totally at an American public who will not see through the propaganda.

Gee, I guess I found my soapbox. Facebook. I was going to tell you how much I like it. I have a few friends that have found their way to it. I had my account for awhile before I realized the advantages of it. I hope more of friends will too. The thing I like about it is that I can keep up with my friends without having to actually see them or even talk to them. It's as if they are publishing their own little newsletter for me to read each day. You know, like Christmas card newsletters. You know how we all love to catch up on what our friends are doing each year.

Of course, you might ask yourself why do I care what they are doing if I don't get to actually spend time with them. Well, that too is a sign of the times. Who has time to visit anymore?

Another thing I really like about it is that I can update my "status" each day, so it acts as a little journal entry. Since I am far too lazy to actually keep a journal, this works well for me.

I have even decided to use a myspace page to log my seminary lessons so that I will have a permanent record of what I taught when. Kinda late for that. I'd like to see what I would have written when I first started teaching a hundred years ago. I started it because one of my students has temporarily moved to Texas, and it will serve as a way for her to keep up with her lessons.

I also like facebook because I can update and catch up with my friends and family in my car on my mobile phone. I spend a lot of time in the car, so it helps me feel like I am making better use of this formally unproductive time. (Roger usually drives, and we go most places together.) We tried listening to talk CD's, but Roger and I don't like to listen to the same things. In fact, we don't listen to anything as Roger likes to spend time in the car talking. No fear, I can talk, listen, and facebook! I am a very good multi-tasker. One has to be these days. Computers may have made our work simpler, but now we have a lot more of it!

I remember when that first became a word: multi-tasker. It was when home computers started making it on the scene.

Home computers! Don't get me started. I had one of the first calculators ever produced by Texas Instruments in 1974 (I think). It was quite large by today's standards. Heck, I even have a calculator "application" on my cell phone. That first calculator was not solar or cordless; if you couldn't plug it in, you had to use the slide rule. Yes, I admit it: I went all the way through Chem I & II, Physics, Trig & Anal. Lit. Geometry with a slide rule. I couldn't use one of them now if my life depended on it. Can you even buy those things anymore? I remember all of the sine and cosines had to be in the appendix because that was the only way to do geometry back then.

And telephones have changed a tad as well... I remember when phone numbers began with an exchange; ours was "ludlow"; LU, I think. My aunt's was "jackson" JA. Area codes were only when you had to call out from yours, and our area codes covered much larger geographical areas, so that wasn't very often.

Our phones all had the curly cord thing which meant we didn't travel very far away from the phone while we were talking on it. It also meant we didn't talk all that long because we had to get stuff done that was farther away than where the phone could reach. We also had rotary dials. I bet most young people don't even know what that is!

We didn't have to wear seat belts in our cars because cars didn't have them. Of course, we didn't have express ways for local travel, so no one drove very fast anyway.

It really is shocking to think how many things have changed in the 50+ years I have been on this earth. One has to think that if things changed like this every 50 years, the cave man is not too hard to imagine. The fact is that civilization didn't change all the much technologically for thousands of years. I think the printing press was the invention that changed all that because once mankind could read, it opened up previously unavailable paths. So now the circle is complete: in the next generation will our leaders be readers? If not, they will close many paths leading to many wonderful opportunities. I don't want to think what our civilization will be like without readers.

Of course, if I can keep improving on my hermit-like existence, I won't know about it, right? All I will know is what I surround myself with: books, books, and more books with plenty of technology thrown in there to enhance the communication experience.

Do you know that plastics came into usage during my lifetime? But that's a discussion for another day...