Three Generations

I loved completing this assignment not only because I was able to talk to three different generations but the fact that I learned so much from the interviews I gave. I decided to talk to my boyfriend who is 22, my brother who is 37 and my grandmother who is 72. All three of them use the internet differently. I decided to interview my boyfriend first. We are the same age and he uses the internet everyday either for school, work or just for fun. Primarily he likes to use the internet to catch up on his sports on ESPN but he also likes to chat with his sister through Facebook who goes to school in Colorado. My boyfriend David is very comfortable communicating on the internet with friends and family. His parents are not very technology savvy but throughout the years growing up he taught himself and now is fairly knowledgeable when it comes to the internet. He believes that technology has given people a lot of advantages but that it has made our society lazy. He thinks that we have become less independent and more dependent on the technologies including himself. David grew up without the internet and technology but now that he has had it while he has been away at college I think that he has become to rely on it much more. He would be able to live without it very easily but because it is such an item of convenience if he doesn’t have to then he would prefer not to.

My brother’s interview went a little differently in the sense that I discovered he doesn’t use the internet as often as I thought. He lives in The Dalles and specifically where his house in located he has a dial up connection. He chooses not to use the internet just because it takes so long for a page to load when he is at home that it isn’t worth the effort. Growing up he didn’t use the internet, he was always outside playing, fishing, hunting and golfing that he barely spent anytime inside. He expressed to me that the only time he uses the internet is to check his email or to occasionally shop online at Cabelas for outdoor gear. Luckily where he works as a firefighter he is able to use the internet and check those items more freely because they don’t have a dial up connection. My brother said that he is comfortable sending an email to someone here or there but other than that he either has no time or the interest to communicate on the computer. He doesn’t really see the sense in Facebook and Myspace when someone could call or talk to a person face-to-face. He agreed 100% that technology has changed the way people live their lives and not necessarily for the better. He thinks just as David did that people have become far too dependent on it and everyone should read a book, go outside or do something far more constructive than being on the internet all day long. He knows that not everyone does that but people have become far too reliant on it.

Out of all of the interviews, I enjoyed talking to my grandmother the most. I try to talk to her at least once a week but asking her for some help on a homework assignment really made her happy and she was willing to give me all the information I needed. My grandmother doesn’t use the internet. She doesn’t have a computer and doesn’t choose to have one. Having a cell phone is a big leap for her and just about all the technology she wants to deal with. If she did have a computer she said her primary use for it would probably be email so she could talk to family members and communicate with them that way. If my grandma did have a computer I know she would be very uncomfortable communicating as she said so herself and she would get too confused with all of the technology they have now a days. My grandma absolutely believes that technology has changed the way people live their lives and she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t see the point of people spending hours of time on the internet, she said there are always better things that people should find to do.

From all of the interviews I noticed that there was one common theme. The fact that all three of my interviewees thought people could find something more constructive to do in their spare time besides being on the internet. In general my boyfriend and brother like the internet and think it has its purposes but my grandmother remembers when she was younger and people did just fine without all of the technology that is now present.

There was one particular sentence that continued to stick out to me when I was reading Wood and Smith’s chapter. On page 157 they state, “Time provides a dimension to study the unfolding of events in various contexts.” I think this related perfectly to this assignment because of the three different generations that I interviewed. All three of them grew up in different generations and experienced completely different lifestyles. Things take time to emerge and I think that is the same case for technology. It doesn’t develop in a split second but throughout time and there are different generations that experience that particular change. On page 143 of Postman’s chapter he states, “And so it is necessary to understand where our techniques come from and what they are good for; we must make them visible so that they may be restored to our sovereignty.” I think that my boyfriend, brother and grandmother all felt that there is a time and place for technology and once it is determined what purpose the particular technology is used for to try and not exceed its limits.

I think that this assignment says a lot about how our society is constantly changing. Things are completely different from when my grandmother was growing up to even my brothers childhood even though it doesn’t seem like very many years have passed. I think that our society now, right at this moment relies on the internet and all of the technology given. Perhaps that might evolve into something else in a few years but for the time being we are the technology generation. Do you agree?