People at Work #7 : : Changing a Lightbulb*

I have been thinking about Doingok's journal entry Inspiration about her grandmother, who sat crocheting by her window every day, "looking out over the busy street below". My first thought was, "poor lonely lady", followed almost immediately by, "that sounds a lot like my grandmother". In fact,maybe it is not our grandmothers, who were lonely, but we, who have surrounded ourselves with so much technology that perhaps for all our seeming 'busyness' , it is we who are lonely.

We are a generation who are unable to wait in line for a coffee without pulling out our smartphones. Our grandmothers were much more 'in the moment' then we are, immersed in whatever they were doing whether it was washing clothes, cooking meals, or sitting by the window watching the world go by. Our generation lets the world go by while we have our heads bowed, not over crocheting, but over our smartphones and computers.

We have given up a lot for this 'connectedness'…we have surrounded ourselves and our children with Google, which might have an answer to the latest question to pop into our minds, (but how reliable is that answer?) and Hello Barbie, a doll who can carry on a preprogrammed 'conversation'.  

In our grandmother's day we would have pondered a question, maybe looked it up in a dictionary or encyclopedia or gone to the library. The algorithms that go into a simple Google search are mind boggling, and the personal freedom we give up by allowing our every move to be followed are frightening. Never mind whether the algorithms are skewed, or how they were arrived at in the first place.

Technology is great but also a bit like the genie we can't put back into the bottle. it has moved ahead  faster than our ability to comprehend it. 
I like the idea of sitting somewhere and watching the world go by. 

*I was watching the world go by this morning looking for an interesting photo when I came across  the guy  in the cherry picker who, according to the man on the ground watching him, was  checking all the lightbulbs in the Christmas decorations to be sure they worked! Plus I love combination of palm tree, blue sky Christmas decorations and a big truck and two people to change a lightbulb!