It really strikes me how different a world my daughter will grow up in than I did. I know for a fact that I’m not the first person to have these thoughts. I would imagine every parent since the beginning of time has had these thoughts at one point or another. She will never really know what film is. She will never really know what a typewriter is. She won’t know a time when finding a pay phone was an issue. She’ll never know a time without completely ubiquitous computing.
I was talking with my wife tonight about something and the conversation moved towards our daughter being in school, which is still several years off. I realized that I have no idea how the internet has impacted life in school. I think I have a pretty decent grasp on the “social networking” stuff. I know what myspace, facebook, twitter, etc are. I don’t use all of them so there’s a limit to what I can know about them, but I have a feel for where they fit. What I have 0 clue about, is how the internet is impacting the educational part of grade school. Are there assignments to look something up online? Are assignments emailed to the students? The possibilities seem endless to me. In 4 years when our daughter actually starts attending school what will the internet look like? I’m really excited to see what the answers are.
I remember my mom switching from handwritten drafts and a typewriter to using a word processor while she was working on her master’s degree and her CASE (masters +30). I remember my dad using a Burroughs hand pull mechanical/electric “adding machine” to tally general ledgers. There was a time in my life when there weren’t computers (yes, I know that computers have been around since the 30s, this is just from my standpoint). My daughter will never know a time without the internet. I think because of that she’ll have a different way of looking at the internet because she never knew a time without it. Like my grandparents saw life a bit differently than my parents did because of the telephone, and other improvements my parents took for granted. I realize this isn’t groundbreaking stuff but I had never taken the time to think about it. Off to send some mail. . . .
