Tag: the future

denial

It seems to me that all of us are in denial. We know climate change is almost certainly coming, and it’s going to be bad. Yet we continue to fly around in airplanes and can’t even conceive of a future in which air travel is prohibitively expensive and unethical. Some of us try to be as green as possible, but all that means in practice is turning off a light now and then. People say they recycle, they’ve changed their lightbulbs, but this sort of action is completely trivial in the face of what is needed if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. I’m not sure why people even think doing such tiny things is an achievement, why isn’t it just the norm?

I think there’s an interesting parallel between illegal file sharing and climate change. We know file sharing is wrong, and probably harmful to the creators of the movies, TV shows and music we enjoy. Yet we keep on doing it with abandon. We know it’s wrong, but continue to do nothing to change our behaviour. It’s just too hard.

My generation and young people generally, have the most to lose from a continuation of the status quo – yet we continue to act like nothing is wrong. In our lifetimes, the world will get warmer, the seas will rise, millions of people will be displaced, the poor will be forced further into poverty. I realise that there are a number of extremely concerned, energetic and active youth activists who are working tirelessly to raise awareness about climate change, but why don’t the rest of us really care? Why aren’t we doing anything about it? Continue reading “denial”

Technology

When television became accessible to normal families my grandparents would have been in middle age, and my parents would have been about ten. I’ve never know anything else. In the space of just a few years technology has rapidly saturated our lives, but the ability of different age groups to use it is markedly different.

One thing I have been thinking about recently is whether I will become like my parents when using new technology in the future.  My parents (in their late 50s) use computers and cell phones etc pretty well, but they don’t have the same instinctive knowledge of how to do things. They often need to consult manuals to operate things whereas I don’t, and when they get stuck I often know what to do. I’m sure I’m not alone in this – it’s probably this same situation in families across the developed world, which isn’t to say there aren’t any exceptions. I guess it’s the difference between growing up with television, computers, and cell phones and having to adopt them later in life. For the young people of today the operation of anything electronic comes naturally because it’s all we’ve ever known.

But what I’ve been thinking about is – will I be the same? Or will the skills that I have aquired in my early years help me to grapple with the new things that the future has to offer? I’m just hoping that I can remain tech-savie for the rest of my life. What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know.