Saturday 22 November 2008

Being in Touch

Seeing all the young people going around with phones either clamped to their ears or with flying thumbs over the key pad it stuck me that today’s generation, and a few of us older ones, just cannot be out of touch with other for a moment. Now in keeping with my blog title how does this remind me of something.

Some years ago I heard of a university project that was in the USA, somewhere, that involved a dozen or so students being linked together with computers that were in a pair of glasses, or goggles, not sure which. They could see the real world with one eye and the other was a computer link to all the other students and the professor. I know they could communicate with each other but I am not sure what else they could get. Possibly the internet. The point that interested me was that they became so used to the company of the others they began to work as almost one brain, one entity. When the project came to an end they felt quite lost.

Are we getting to this point in reality? Folk seem entirely unable to walk to the bus stop or round our towns and cities without being in touch with their friend, relations and perhaps even enemies, think bullying. If unable to talk they text, and when they get home they go on line and chat, email, blog, video and go into virtual worlds to be in touch with each other and anyone one else anywhere in the world.

I even have a go at it myself, love email, am on You Tube, and write this blog. I can used my PDA quite well and can text with the best of ‘em. (73 ½ exactly)
So will our descendents be permanently in touch with others and is it a ‘Big Brother’ step too far. I guess I won’t be around long enough to find out. Shame.

Tuesday 11 November 2008

11-11 salute

Today is 90 years since the end of the first world war, so the media keeps reminding me. My parents lived through that war but I lived though the second. Luckily I did not lose anybody close nor was I bombed out. I was machine gunned.
However I will dedicated my blog today to two Canadians that my family had made friends with. They turned up one night in their tank outside our house and were on their way, we later realised, to the Normandy beaches. They had stopped by to bring me, an eight year old, some chocolate.
We never heard from them again and may or may not have survived. I have never forgotten that they could bother about one small child at such a time. I salute them now.