BACK TO PEN AND PAPER

If you come from a farming background chance are you will have had some brain rewiring time to adjust to the use of the letters AI. Artificial insemination has become intelligence. It was only a matter of time perhaps! I have just read Klaus Swabbs book on the 4th Industrial Revolution. Gosh he was enthusiastic about how technology was going to be the wonderful gamechanger. Indeed it is difficult to deny the progress and speed of technology. But have you noticed the brakes being applied more lately? Screens have not been the answer to seamless learning in schools. In fact there is a return to pen and paper. A realisation that technology does not provide all the answers. Finding the balance of traditional and modern is our challenge today. Personally I find the automatic tills a challenge. “Unidentified item in the bagging area” This slogan is up there now with “Mind the gap” The latest gadget to keep up with. How bloody awful it is for the rising number of folk suffering with memory loss and dementia to have to cope with the speed of technology development. Are we checking out mentally I wonder? Screens are robbing our children of the ability to socialise and every daily interaction that can reinforce socialisation is being digitised. Social connections are so valuable for our health and slowly we are realising this. But will we be able to recover the virtualised children in time? That is the concern.  

Anne Maher