The Death of the Card Catalog

Is everyone as excited as I am? I have had waited a WEEK to get this out!!

But before I get started, has anyone heard about Rush Limbaugh's latest bit of political slander? Lady Obama, who is currently investing interest in childhood obesity, was caught on a recent vacation eating a meal consisting of greasy, fatty, ribs and other horrifyingly delicious foods, and then Rush Limbaugh has the nerve to comment on her very acceptable shape of frame saying that if she is going to be taking an active position in obesity issues, maybe she should practice what she preaches. Well, in case nobody knows, Rush Limbaugh is a fat, greasy obese slob of a man who has absolutely NO right to comment on the physical physique of a woman who at least appears to take quite good care of herself. I am pretty sure that even if you are fighting to solve obesity problems, you are allowed to eat a bit of fatty unhealthy food while you are on vacation, and it doesn't make you a hypocrite. Who is he to say that she doesn't eat healthy the rest of the time that she isn't being exposed by media? Just saying Rush maybe you should be concerned with your own fat fucking ass before you even dare attack someone else. Don't even think about dessert.

Anyways, as promised an entry about technology. As much as I hate to disappoint, its NOT about anti-lasers. If you were expecting anti-lasers, you might as well stop reading now.

Let me start off by saying I haven't been to a library in quite some time (I know shame on me!), so I am not 100% sure about this, but when was the last time you went to a library and saw a card catalog? Remember those big wooden shelves full of small drawers that you would open up according to letter and flip through a bunch of those cards until you found the book you were looking for? You would then have to write down the number, authors name, and whatever other information you were required to find it on the shelf. What I am getting at is I am not even sure if they exist anymore. I don't remember seeing them in the library the last time I was there, and why would there be? We have computers right?

Oh do we EVER have computers! We have phones that are computers, we have computers that are computers, we have TV's, and video games, and chip and pin credit cards. Its a wonderful time to be alive, with all these conveniences right at our fingertips. Think about the last time you wrote a hand written letter to someone and mailed it. I mean a REAL letter, not just a thank you or birthday card. You can even just text your regards these days. Email is also the new black. When was the last time you didn't use Facebook at ALL to get a hold of all your friends to go out for beers on a Saturday? Sure I get unlimited evening and weekend phone calls on my cellphone and I probably make 5 calls a month. Remember when you took a picture on a camera and you had to make it really count because you couldn't just pull it up on a screen and delete it if you didn't like it?

Where am I going with this, who cares right? Well, what I am finding funny is that the more I hear about my 6 year old niece going to school (Grade 1), the more I am hearing about her requirement to use computers to learn, be expected to do large math problems with little addition and subtraction background to follow her, and her dependence on technology to help her live her life. Computers are only a tool to help you do work more efficiently, and effectively. If you can't read and write, how can you type? If you don't know how to do math, how can you get by without a calculator? If you can't read a card catalog, how are you going to find a book in the library? This is the kind of emphasis we are putting on our children of today, to learn how to use technology, its the way of the future. You know what though, I don't have kids. If I got a girl pregnant tomorrow it would still be 9 months before I even HAD a kid and another few years before they went to school, so why should I care whats going on in our education systems right? My kids aren't there. No thats WRONG.

This new generation of kids are going to be OUR future when we get old, just like how we are our parents future now. What happens when you become the boss of some big company and you have to make a bunch of new hires and you have all these applicants that are too stupid to know shit because in elementary school they were taught how to use a computer instead of basic reading, writing, speaking, and math principles? This is EVERYONES problem.

I know this is a bit of an extreme view point and many people may say "Well Craig, you need to learn how to use computers to be successful, times are different than when we were growing up, look at how things have changed.." yadda yadda yadda. I went though school with very little computer use, and I know how to use them now! And I also know how to read, write, and speak! The point is, do we REALLY need to push technology on children at such a young age? What happens if the computers stop working and we have to resort to writing on paper again? Do we stop writing? What happens if our cellphones become obsolete? Do we stop talking to people that live further than a block away from us? And what happens if you are unable to go to the library one day and search for a book because computers are broken and there is no card catalog to point you in the direction of your literature.

Do we stop reading books? Something to think about.

Thanks for reading.
-Swanny