Final Post

 Technology has always been advancing since time began. It is like a parabola if you chart the innovations and how fast they have come. The 1st computer was proposed in 1837 by Charles Babbage as a multipurpose machine called the Analytical Engine. It wouldn't be realized until 1910 by his youngest son Henry Babbage who was able to form basic calculations on it. This would evolve into becoming programmable with the Z1 in 1936, a proposition for the Turing machine operating off of logical instructions that same year, the Colossus being the first electrical and programmable computer in 1943 used for decoding cryptic German messages in WWII, and many more. These were the stepping stones for computing as a whole, and we have gone in many unexpected places within 100 years. 

What I grew up with in the early 2000s hardly resembles what the next generations have gotten in the late 2010s. Games to play on the go were only on cartridges you would buy from a store. Now most games are downloadable on mobile and other game store fronts. Most of the content I would watch would be on television through channels like Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. I would have to wait for my favorite show to be on. Now most kids are watching any videos they want on YouTube. Instead of favorite shows, they would have favorite content creators, loving their personalities and skills. All of their content is on demand as long as they have the internet. 

A huge one that leaves me with more concerns as a future parent are the innovations in communication. The only way to communicate with people long-distance back in my day was if you knew their phone number and had a phone on you. Nowadays, there are voice chat in video games, video calls on a lot of platforms, social media outlets everywhere, etc. I didn’t grow up indulging too much in that stuff so I wouldn’t know about all of the dangers. I can only make assumptions from my point of view. I’ve seen cases of cyberbullying, obsessions, and harassments that I would want to keep my children from. I understand that a lot of what defines our behaviors as adults are based on childhood experiences and trauma. I would want to keep my children safe, but at some point, I may be holding them back from forming their own identities. I would hate to undermine their intelligence as well. I remember my parents holding me back from playing Pokemon when I was a kid. I felt left out when most of my peers were trading the cards and battling through the games. I came to learn that my parents got a lot of their views of the franchise from superstitious priests convinced the game was about raising and playing with cyber demons. After doing research when I was older, I found that the game was nothing like that and my parents made those decisions based on misinformation. 

I bring this up because I have some assumptions about technology and how it has affected my generation. We are very tech savvy with various programs and operating systems, making us capable of helping older people resolve issues. But their generation seems to have more real-world knowledge than us. I can list off things like agricultural knowledge, the importance of cooking utensils, how to write in cursive, knowledge of how car engines work, etc. Our generation may have ease of access to information pertaining to these topics on the internet, but are our brains dependent on that? I have my concerns for the future generations because I had a point in time where the world didn’t revolve around it. I won’t fully understand what it’s like to have the internet be so present in my life and that will blur the line for me as a parent. I don’t think that any generation is dumber than the other; we just put more of our brain power into different things. The question I have is; is technology the right thing to focus on? It’s difficult not to focus on what’s new and impressive, but are we losing a bit of our humanity because of it?

The rate of technological innovation is at breakneck speeds, but is it moving too fast for us to fully understand it? What was once sci-fi became reality. It’s growing more difficult to predict what will be created next. With that, is it going to be more difficult for people 10 years apart to understand one another?