justplainbil

Just Plain Bill

Analog in a Digital World

As our technological world speeds into new frontiers, with more innovative and incredible possibilities on a daily basis, do you ever feel like you’re an analog person in a digital world?

That question came to mind just last evening as I was working through a new application, thrilled by a work challenge involving some new software.

I am basically a self-taught computer user, starting with learning to use a keypunch machine creating programs with 80-column cards in graduate school, to not having formal instructions or support from Apple when I bought its IIE. I’ve used a dial-up Epson, TRS 80, the DOS PC system, found my way through all the MS Office iterations, and on and on to the present.

So, what does that feel like? I wonder if the difference between digital and analog on the perceptional continuum is similar to the difference in brain dominance: left brain, influenced by the random, romantic… and right brain, focused on the concrete, sequential. (Kind of hard to get my brain around things that are not seen in pictures and relationships!)

I know there are no absolutes in considering ways we view and process the world, but I hope there will come a time when we’re all more sensitive to the infinite ways we learn, and especially a time when we’re able to break the lock-step industrial age education system. I’m reminded of a book I read while preparing to be a teacher back in the ‘60s, Summerhill, by Alexander Sutherland Neill, who believed that “school should be made to fit the child.”

Meanwhile, I’m slow to learn in a society that was not grounded by inkwells, chalk boards, sitting in the corner for talking, and desks bolted to the floor – which is probably why I’m forever experiencing my second, third… childhood, and loving it!