Thursday, October 11, 2012

Here and Now

How often parents and teachers are complaining about the lake of patience children have?
remember? The here and now that get on your nerve?
When they are little, we think it will pass, this behavior being part of the babies behavior who still need to learn to wait. But instead of getting better, it can become worse...

Just look around and see. Technology is a great thing, no doubt about it, but what happen when it is technology who command the human and not the opposite?

As I was going to school to pick up my children, listening to some news show on the radio and looking around, I noticed that all the parents around me were on the phone! Some were speaking, some were texting, some were obviously scrolling to find something on their smartphone. All of them were with their head down.  

One of the mom was opening the door to her little girl, still speaking on the phone, she had no time for a "Hi honey, how was your day?" She was simply completely absorbed by her conversation.
I felt sad for her and her little girl and started wondering: could she have wait before answering that call? Is that so urgent? Like if a bomb was going to be launched and the decision of saying yes or no could not wait a few more minutes?

Did you notice that when their cell phone ring, most people said "sorry" and pick it up. I always wonder if their voice-mail is on strike? Why don't they simply let their voice-mail do its job in the first place and then check to see if the matter is really super urgent?

For example, this mom could have pick up her daughter nicely, enjoy a bit of conversation with her driving home and then check her voice-mail to see if she really had to call back shortly or not.
But no, as all those parents around me, she had to pick up the phone, she could not wait: here and now!

Our world is going faster and faster and we are loosing control. we are just following the flow instead of controlling it. Life without cell phone is not that long ago, may be 15 years ago? We all had answering machine and we all used to not be on call. We were taking more time to think may be?

Anyway, what kind of example is that? How can we be surprised then that our children are getting more impatient about everything. 

I saw a commercial today about a smartphone, I think, or about the technology behind it, I forgot. But the script was showing a dad always travelling who was able to communicate with his daughter over the years because of that technology. Is that so?

Do you really think that  dads were not calling their daughter before?
Ok, they were calling them from hotel or public cabin, it was less comfortable and true, they were not showing them anything as they did not have a camera in the phone. But they were may be talking more, like in this commercial, the dad was showing with his smartphone the surprise he was getting for his daughter: a guitar. I guess that the same dad without a cellphone would have describe the guitar instead of showing it. Confusion can come from commercial. Children may easily think that he can be a great dad because he has a smartphone and this is exactly the ambiguity that is used by the advertiser.

The cult of the here and now is everywhere and the children are born in it. They never saw a world without cellphone, internet. And advertiser are also showing them a world were they can wish and get whatever they want... oh well, sure they need also money as there is no genie in the lamp...



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