My children have a hard time grasping how I grew up without the internet. It’s sort of like saying to them that I grew up without water or food. And my kids are still too little to really use the internet much; in another ten years, they’ll compare me with people who grew up without indoor plumbing or lightbulbs.
The gap between my generation and my children’s is arguably the biggest in all of history. My childhood more closely resembled that of my grandparents than that of my own children. I didn’t even live in a town with restaurants (though I well remember begging my mom for a Happy Meal when a McDonald’s arrived about an hour away from us). I remember cooking with no microwave, and using pens, paper, and stamps to stay connected with my friends each time I moved. In my house, I was the television remote. It was a big day when we got that little clicker and I got to stay on the couch with everyone else when my dad wanted to surf our three channels. Ah, the memories my children will never have.
I’m a suspicious friend of technology. While I’m as fascinated by the internet as the next person—how cool is it that at a moment’s notice, I can find out if Robert Goulet is still alive or not?—I’m also leery of what it’s doing to our minds and our culture. I stumbled across this quote in the book Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps:
“And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation of it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.”
The origin of this quote? Socrates. About 2,300 years before the invention of the internet. (Yes, I looked that up on the internet and learned not only a lot about Socrates, but how a mom lost 21 percent of her body fat by obeying once simple dietary rule. Thanks, Google ads!)
The question is not if technology is shaping our minds and our culture, but how. Only time will tell if it’s for better or for worse. Like most things, it’s probably a mix of both. In the meantime, my job is to teach my kids to use the technology and enjoy it for what it is while not becoming controlled by it. And most important of all, to invest their lives in the pursuit of true wisdom over mere information.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.”
