Memories

There's often talk about parents building memories fortheir children. While I think that is valuable, I'm thinking that many of the memories we've built with the weeWeir have done us as much, or more good than they have for her.

I'm thinking about when we had a few nights away last month and she wouldn't settle to sleep on our first night. We tried our usual arsenal of tricks, but nothing worked. Eventually, after four hours we out her in the car and she was asleep in seconds. Literally seconds.

Literally.

I look back and find it completely fine, cute, understandable and all that. At the time, it was none of those things.

What did I learn from that memory? What do I need to leave behind from that memory?

I learned that the moment can be hard to separate from the context. That being away from home a few weeks after you move to a new home is pretty unsettling for a weeWeir. And that being awake until midnight one night will result in no problems the following night.

I learned that getting worked up by the lack of sleeping child is understandable but almost as futile as the lack of sleep itself. It's part of the process and next time, we'll try the car about three hours earlier in the process...

It would be easy to jump to a conclusion that we should never go away from home again, or never try and get the weeWeir to sleep in a strange bed. But that's not the real memory.

We had a great holiday and learned some new stuff about going away from home when you have a small person involved.

Have you ever been there? What are your memories telling you?

Denial of loss

If we can explain it, then maybe we don't need to be sad about it.

Maybe we don't need to lament.

Following what I wrote last night here, I found this video with Walter Brueggeman about pain, lament and a safe place really interesting.

Providing A Safe Place from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

It makes me think that we (media, public and every else!) are quick to look for reasons, rationale and restitution at the expense of the lament.

Stopping to cry is no bad thing.

I wonder if the reason for some belief systems requiring people to be buried within 24 hours of dying is to focus the attention of those grieving on that - rather than on vengance? I don't know, but it's a thought.

Either way, we lament the killing of the innocent.

twenty years

Listening to Digital Planet on the way to work this morning (podcast available here) I was thinking about 20 years of the World Wide Web.

In just twenty years the way we catalogue and find data has been radically changed - and the way that people communicate is completely different.

So, here's my earliest memories of computing and communication.

An Olivetti 386SX, 33mHz desktop computer bought for Christmas one year (1993, maybe?) by my Dad as a *family* tool.  I got to use it to play games, create documents for school and all that jazz.

I remember when Dad got Compuserve  - dial-up internet, email and the internet.  I had NO IDEA how it worked, what it could do or what the point was, but hey, it was there.  If I'd paid more attention, maybe I'd be more of a geek than I am now.

I remember trying to use webpages that were full of text (bad layout, crummy images and generally hard to interact with) and simply not really getting the point.  Was only 15 or so... I guess others are more entrepreneurial and I think I can see potential better now than I could then. 

Anyway, I do remember using his email to send messages to people (his email address was a collection of numbers @compuserve.com - and I think he paid a fee every month to have access as well as paying for the dial-up call time.  I remember making up flyers for my band using the PC and putting the email address on the contact details and then wondering if that was too geek-like?!

And how times have changed, and some things haven't.  Sure, Moore's Law has brought us the equivalent of 90's supercomputers in our pockets and we can buy most PC hardware for a fraction of the prices of the mid-90s (thank you, China), but we still pay for access.  Not sure that's a bad thing, but it does have limits.

I wonder what things might be like twenty years from now.  Will connectivity be included in the price of the device - pay £200 for an iPhone 10.0 and do as much as you like?  Will technology fail us and we get back to writing on dead trees?  Will we think that this text-based interface is so old-skool now that we use video to interact and do everything (ordering your shopping by leaving a voice mail?).

I quoted Heraclitus when editing content for David Thomson the other day: Change is the only constant.

What are your earliest memories of the World Wide Web? How has this technology changed your life? What do you think the future might lead to?