Human
I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.
Albert Einstein
School has started for my grandkids, and I tell them school is where you go to learn how to learn. In other words, you learn the tools for a lifetime of learning. I doubt this resonated deeply in my Knoxville grandkids, ages 13 and 10. Admittedly, it didn’t resonate with me when I was a youngling. The mother of my Oregon grandkids is a middle school language arts teacher. I admire the joy of reading she has instilled in her youngsters.
Reading is the gateway to learning, but statistics show reading proficiency is declining in America, and fewer people read books for pleasure or enlightenment. This is especially true among young people who stream and use social media on their devices.
Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write. And I might add that you must be able to read for comprehension and be able to communicate with others.
I’m no Einstein, but I am very curious about a lot of things. Forest Gump’s mother said, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” Those who follow this column might say something similar about me because you never know where my interest might take this column.
The Internet is a marvelous tool for the curious and has transformed the modern age. Other than television, screen time was an alien concept when I was in the formal education process because there was no Internet until the 1990s, and smartphones weren’t available until 2007. Now, I feel cut off from the world of information if my iPhone is not in my pocket. Since English is a living language, we now have the term “nomophobia” for the sense of “anxiety if someone is unable to access their smartphone or cellular service.” In English, there’s a word for everything, or we will create one!
Even though market research shows that the average American spends 10 hours a day on devices, the problem is perhaps less about screen time and more about what’s on the screen. Pornography is problematic even if SCOTUS judges have a hard time defining it. And social media is a big problem as described in Roger McNamee’s book “Zucked, Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe” and Shoshana Zuboff’s book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.”
I admit I’m a bibliophile, but I have a friend who reads books he’s downloaded to his Kindle. Should that be counted as screen time? Surfing the net to answer questions, to study a topic, or to assuage non-prurient curiosity is fine in my “book.” And in defense of some screen time, I’ve found that my 13-year-old grandson is a treasure trove of information that didn’t come from a fusty book.
I like to identify trees and flowers, especially wild flowers. I have a wonderful app on my iPhone called Seek, which helps me identify fauna and flora – mostly flora. I don’t need an app to recognize coyotes and turkeys or the black bear that was on my porch a few weeks ago.
The ever frugal Becky also likes the app, which is free. Recently, we were out walking and she spied an unknown flower. So, she whipped out her iPhone and turned to identify the flower, which I was also contemplating. As she panned to the flower, the app caught my face and promptly identified me as “human.” The app’s AI even showed pictures of others of my species and then complimented Becky for identifying a new fauna!
I found this happenstance fascinating, as the Star Trek character Spock would say. The AI (artificial intelligence – and I would use that term loosely) behind the app’s function saw me as an entity and identified me as any other fauna and flora.
I wonder if the AI would identify another AI “entity” if it were on the screen? I’m exploring this notion in the concluding novel of my science fiction trilogy. Perhaps the next leap in humans might be an implanted chip interface (but not Zuckerberg’s!) connecting the human brain and machine learning. Stay tuned.
I’ve come to a time in my life when I worry less than when I was younger. Perhaps this is because I’ve made it, as they say. I have been blessed to live long and well. We are financially stable. I can’t police where my grandkids go on the Internet. That’s up to their parents to control with filters. Although we recycle and remain environmentally conscious, I don’t worry about climate change since I always thought it was bad science and a “poor excuse to pick a man’s pocket,” as Ebenezer Scrooge would say.
And I no longer worry about the country because we now have a real president who is leading the way to Make America Great Again. Along the way, he’s fixing the economy and trade imbalances; he’s already fixed illegal immigration and the border. And he’s trying to knock some common sense into the Democrats, but I’m not sure that’s possible. I wish I could shine Becky’s app on President Trump. It might identify him as Batman!
The fact that I’m less worried doesn’t mean I’m complacent or disengaged. People who read this column know that I care deeply about my country, my family and my faith, which are all foundational with me.
As you get older, you wonder what legacy you will leave. I have a legacy of patients that I helped during my medical career. I have a legacy of two wonderful daughters and five grandchildren. And since I have a second career as a writer, I will leave a legacy of my thoughts and words, which are more reflective of my life than a tombstone.
But don’t worry, I’m not done yet. I have to finish the third novel in my Stellar Trilogy, and it will take another year and a half to reach 1000 essays in The Knoxville Focus. And as the Christian musical group Passion with Melodie Malone sang in “I’ve Witnessed It,” “I’ve got stories I’ll live to tell.”
