Digital is So Broadening

Three weeks ago I overheard a young adult woman tending the Health Club check-in desk comment to her colleague, “Yeah…I gave up on trying to read analog clocks a loooong time ago.”

This remark cost me most of my faith in the survivability of the human race. If we couldn’t invent senseless new applications for replacement technologies without forgetting the most trivial of skills we’d acquired up to that point, how could we hope to control that new technology? Far better to resist being softened, and altered, by the new ways.

But last week my 6-year-old Veronique reinstated that faith, in one quick moment single-handedly earning for the entire species my replenished hope that creativity, mental alacrity, and an ability to remain pure in the face of faux advancement would be enough to get us through.

“Hey Daddy, I’m a lot more!”

I looked over at her as I brushed my teeth; she'd stepped onto the sleek glass bathroom scale, both temperamental and entirely digital, that we’d received the previous year as a gift. “You’re more?" I asked with a flouride accent. "You mean you’re no longer 41 pounds like you’ve been for the last two years?”

“Yeah, I’m more!”

“Well, great; how much do you weigh?”

“Eight, eight, dot, eight, eight!”

So I’m happy to report that we’re saved.