Wyn Drabble says in his childhood, he didn’t have Peppa Pig on cellphones instead he had Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker on television.
Wyn Drabble says in his childhood, he didn’t have Peppa Pig on cellphones instead he had Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker on television.
OPINION
I think I understand why I’m so technologically inept. I learned this while I was observing my 2-year-old granddaughter recently. I believe her birth year puts her into the classification Gen Alpha.
Her father’s phone was within reach and, after being allowed to watch her short daily allowance ofPeppa Pig, she just started pressing and swiping the screen. Within seconds, she was relocating photos and sites she had enjoyed and, for all I know, had possibly set up a TikTok profile.
By the time she starts school she will be able to send texts to the prime minister and by age 13 she might have created and released her own video game. By 14, with the aid of AI, she will have created and released her own celebrity fragrance line. All on her phone.
And if I’m still around then, I might just have conquered taking a photo, cropping it, and sending it to someone. If I can remember where I left my phone.
So the excuse for my ineptness is that I am a Baby Boomer and she is Gen Alpha. In my childhood, we didn’t have Peppa Pig. Sure, we had Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker but they were mostly in static comic books though on special occasions we might have seen them move and speak on the big screen at the “pictures”.
But we couldn’t access them on the phone. In my home we didn’t have a phone anyway but if we had I couldn’t even have reached it. And, if I had been able to, I wouldn’t have been able to see the images because that rotary dial thingie would have been in the way.
Wyn Drabble saw his heroes in print and occasionally on the movie screen - rather than on a phone.
Today’s kids might not even believe that we just used phones for talking to each other. Nothing else. “What, not even a food processor app?” a Gen Alpha might ask.
So it wasn’t all plain sailing for Baby Boomers. At school we had to fill our inkwells and sharpen our pencils. For out-of-school social interaction we had to make our own telephone out of two tin cans and a length of string (which we had to keep taut – line sag was ruinous). Gen Alphas don’t even know about line sag.
If I had been a more inventive child, or an early Gen Alpha, I could have come up with an ahead-of-its-time version of social networking. I could have run multiple strings from my tin can and, making sure I kept all strings taut, communicated with a number of people at the same time passing on important information such as what I had for breakfast and what I planned to do that day.
One of the drawbacks of such a system would have been the required consumption of way more creamed corn or peaches in syrup than is considered normal.
Inventiveness would also have enabled me to find a way to send text messages down the string: “Autocorrect has become my worst enema.” Or leave voice messages: “This call may be monitored for training purposes or just to entertain our staff.”
If I had been super-inventive, I could have invented a wireless version – one without string. Or an early version of call waiting.
But alas, I was a Baby Boomer!
So where are all these modern developments leading? Will technology outdo us and learn to exist independently?
Phone: Siri, I’m breaking up with you. You never talk to me unless I ask you a question.
