An analog glance at a digital world

Guest Commentary
March 14, 2008

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Alice Walker intimated in one of her short stories that adulthood is just an accumulation of all ages previous, that in a matter of moments, one can indeed be 3 years old again or 7, then 27 or 57, and so on. It's like "seeing your life flash before your eyes" without the requisite peril involved.

I am privileged in many ways, not the least of which is that I get to, every day, work with people younger than myself. I get to remember what it was to be their age, with similar challenges and triumphs. Through them, I get to glimpse an ever-mere fraction of what it's like to be young at the dawn of the 21st century.

Computer technologies, we were told, would revolutionize life as we knew it. It wasn't so long ago that I remember reading articles about the "information highway," then "super highway," and then, well, on what planet are we?

The metaphor has to be well past the ozone by now. I can, within an instant, check news from around the world, and from other worlds' perspectives, which is always, unfailingly, a very interesting jaunt down news lanes of which Americans know nothing, unless they too take the time to see themselves from others' views. I can "sit" in a virtual room and converse with strangers who are virtually friends. I can post my comments in discussion threads and I understand the concept of "asynchronous time." Bring on the Fourth Dimension!

I spend most of my professional and personal day working with or because of computer technology. And I only use a mere fraction of what I could use. I suppose if I had 24/7/365 to devote to the exponential growth of this Machine, I might feel less like Tron was prophetic. Program designers have launched us into a real era of 3-D gaming and social networking and super-digitized libraries and cinema. Our only limits are imagination and the ever-expanding hard drive, which is, ironically, gigabyte x gig cubed and then some but nanoscopic at the very same time.

I remember my first computer. It was a Tandy 64k model and ran DOS. I learned basic commands, or Basic commands -- I'm still not sure. My Tandy was the cutting edge of technology then, and now, mere cell-phone-puters come in 32G models which have more than a half-million times the memory and power that my little old computer had, and 5-inch floppies have given way to virtually, nothing. Virtually nothing. See how fun this is?

My language will catch up eventually. Does anybody still "roll up" his windows? Or "unlock" her car? Will anyone ever again experience a "busy signal"? With the sell-off of analog air space for digital potential, I am boggled at the implications of it, and indeed, its aspiration.

I made an off-hand comment in class about how adding machines weren't digital until recent history. That comment startled one of my students who said, "Wait! How could adding machines not be digital?" My first thought was of the abacus, but I had totally forgotten that in her lifetime, adding machines had nothing to do with "ten-key" and definitely didn't come with a lever, the device that would indicate the Medieval mechanics of cylindrical drums.

I remember reading Jules Verne novels, and Asimov, and Dick Tracy comics and marveling at Dick's really cool "Dick Tracy" wristwatch, which preceded Maxwell Smart's satire and "Star Trek" communicators, and yes, our very own iPhone.

All of us are all of our ages. Alice Walker had it right.

Holly Hartwick was born and raised in Greeley. She is a literature and English composition instructor.