They will never know…

Sometimes I look at my two children with a pang of jealously. They are young; they have lives yet to be lived. They have hopes, dreams and no idea what’s around the corner for them. But then there is a whole host of things they will never know or experience.

They will probably never use an old fashioned landline dial phone. How it use to take forever to dial a number or experience the satisfying clunk when you slammed down the receiver.

They will probably never experience the joy and delight of what it’s like to get a handwritten letter in the post. Or even worse they will probably never sit down and compose a letter with pen and paper.

They will never bash out a letter on an old fashioned typewriter or use copies amounts of tip-ex.

They will never have to sit for hours untangling a tape machine and their prized tape cassette. Or then spend more hours re-winding the mangled tape back into the cassette with a pencil.

They will instead have lives filled with tedious things like checking they got the best BT broadband deals and always having to be near an electric point for all the instant electric gadgets that need recharging.

Instead their lives will be filled with instants. They’ll have instant texts that can give them all those answers to questions and messages straight away to their phones with no waiting around. They will take for granted instant emails on the go, anytime, anyplace.

 

I wonder in 20/30 years what fears and dreams my two children could be writing about for their children. Surely they must have invented everything by now. Or not? In 2004 the BBC had this program about Inventions that changed the world and facebook was certainly not in the list.

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