The joys of being wired
Robin Goldsworthy, city editor
There’s really no excuse not to be connected anymore.
A week ago I attended the Small Business Task Force meeting with business leaders from Glendale and the foothills. We discussed how to retain and grow local business. Discussion turned to websites and how to utilize them to tie together businesses and raise the city’s profile.
It was mentioned that not everyone is “wired.” You’d be surprised how many of our neighbors have opted out of the computer age. Of course, to each his own, but I don’t know if these hold-outs realize how much they’re missing.
Or maybe they do.
I was talking to my dentist, Dr. Taormina, in Glendale last Friday morning and the subject of Facebook, the online networking tool, came up. He said that he signed up for Facebook after a friend told him what a great website it was. You can keep in touch with people you’ve gone to school with, worked with, neighbors — it’s a great way not to lose track of people.
Dr. Taormina was not overly impressed.
Yes, initially, it was cool to reconnect with this one buddy, he said. But then he started getting “friend” requests from all types of people. In order to communicate with someone on Facebook, you have to submit a request to them to be their “friend.” Once they accept your request, then you can communicating back and forth.
Well, Dr. Taormina wasn’t interested in being friends with so many people.
“I didn’t like them in high school — why would I want to talk to them now?” he asked of several of the requests he received.
So he closed his Facebook account.
The hygienist and I eyed each other as he ranted.
When he took a break, I had to ask.
“So, I suppose you don’t Twitter?”
She and I busted up.
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I shouldn’t be smug about being computer literate. If you asked my kids, they’d tell you that I barely understand the basics. But being part of the spoiled under-30 crowd, they think they know everything.
Which brings me to an e-mail that I received this week about the under 30s:
To the spoiled under-30 crowd (in part)
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up.
I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of nonsense on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it.
But now that I’m over the ripe old age of 30, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.
You’ve got it so easy. I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia.
And I hate to say it, but you kids today don’t know how good you’ve got it.
I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog.
There was no e-mail. We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen. Then we had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there.
Well, I’m sure you folks get the idea.
I wish I could credit the author, but I don’t know who wrote it. To read it in its entirety, you can google The Under 30 Crowd and several sites will come up.
And if you’re not wired in, ask your kids or grandkids to print it out for you.
ROBIN GOLDSWORTHY is the city editor of the CV Sun. She can be reached at (818) 790-8774 x14 or