It almost hard to imagine a time when we did not carry a cell phone, have satellite, or internet. We have become so depend on today’s modern technology and when we do not have it, we seem lost. I experienced this a few weeks ago.
I felt helpless and not sure what to do was when we had the last batch of storms move through the area. It was the Monday after spring break and my electricity went out hours before the storm even moved through. Really? What was I to do? I was feverishly working on my ESL midterm, a huge project, and a presentation all due on Tuesday. I called ONCOR and of course they could not give me a straight answer as to when it would be back on. My laptop had less than two hours of battery power left so I continued on for another 30 minutes. I called my dad in hysterics about my predicament. Well, what dad wants to hear their little girl have a psychotic breakdown? Not my dad! He came to my rescue once again. He went up to one of our neighbors and bored his generator. When I opened my front door, there parked in my front yard was his white chariot with the generator in the bed of the truck. I was ecstatic because I was just about to go old school by using pen and paper. Who does that anymore? I was able to plug in my computer and a lamp and I was back in business. It was about an hour later and my electricity came back on. Yeah!
It is crazy how dependant we have become. When we forget our phone or lose a computer, it seems as if the world will end. I look at my kids and this is a life they have only known. I now know how my parents or grandparents must have felt telling me stories of the “good ole” days when I was little. It just amazes my kids when I tell them I didn’t have a cell phone or internet when I was their age. Crazy!
I couldn’t even begin to imagine how life would be like if cell phones, computers, and the internet were to be taken away from us. Where I work, the students who come in to work on math, all of their homework assignments are now online. Within the program that they use there is a little “help me” button that gives them an example as to how to work out the problem on the page. Problem is, the students become too dependent on the “help me” example, which honestly doesn’t do a good enough job of explaining “how” to work the problem, instead it just shows them how to get the correct answer for that problem. One of the most common questions I receive is “how did the computer know which formula to use?” Every time they ask that I tell them to take out their textbooks and flip to the chapter/section in the book covering that assignment, and to their astonishment they see all the formulas for that chapter highlighted in a big bold blue text box with a description of when to use it. I wonder, how much easier would that assignment be if only they would’ve read the chapter first instead of relying on the computer to give them the correct answer.
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