There was a recent story sent out regarding the three Rs in the NY school system. It says that approximately 80% of High School students need to take remedial courses in order to attend Jr. College. That in my opinion is troublesome. It is hard to believe that these children/young people have trouble reading, when in fact they are texting and tweeting their little fingers off constantly. Ah, but there is the rub, these texts and tweets are in code, and you don’t need to spell out a word, you just abbreviate it. So in fact there is a completely different language going on and if you were born before 1980, you wouldn’t have a clue unless you took lessons on texting and tweeting. (I thought a bird tweets.)
In fairness, the world today revolves around computers/Tablets/IPhones etc. With that comes a whole set of new problems such as ID theft, cyber terrorism, electronic bullying and on and on.
It’s so bad that we need to have a class in soft skills so that people can be able to talk with one another up close and personal, and learn how to make eye contact. How sad.
I myself have fallen prey to the computer; I have lost some of my memory power and the ability to recall phone numbers. I rely on my phone for that. And when I do text someone, my phone corrects any spelling errors made by me.
Maybe I am being cynical, but let us look at this logically. Computers are doing all our basic jobs such as math, spelling, grammar, making appointments, just about driving our cars. And they are putting the over 40 crowd out of work. Not all has been bad, computers help in the medical field, Armed Services, and police work, as well as making other contributions. But again, we expose ourselves to hackers, and with one hit of a computer button we could have a tragedy. We have fire walls, but someone programmed this safety net in the first place, so again someone can break it down. I am not against progress, but at what cost? Students do not really have to think too hard, and if they know their way around a computer key board, they are set. What ever happened to research, the old Encyclopedias, etc? Libraries seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur, and they are more like museums than research facilities.
We now hear on the news that we could be subject to a cyber-attack that could cripple our water supply, our electric grids, which would shut down our computers. The reason I bring that tidbit up is because I went to make an appointment with a Dr. and the nurse receptionist informed me that their computer system was down so they were closing the office. I asked if they could give me an appointment manually. Nope. So this is the way of the world today.
Now many people are banking on line using their I-phone and, to me that’s dancing with the Devil. You read about hackers getting into these systems on a regular basis, and I wonder why we are making it easy for them. I constantly am amazed how we all realize the potential dangers of putting personal information out there on the Web, yet we continue. My wife calls me a knuckle dragger (cave man,) but I cannot get over watching our lives become absorbed into a little 4” X 6” screen called the Internet.
By: Jim Doyle, owner of Madison Security Group
