Un-technology Moments

A problem with suspending customer holds came up. What we view on the Circulation Screen in Horizon is a little different from what the customer sees from My Account on our website. I had placed Help Desk requests on the subject, some time ago. I tried to find the info by looking through the Help Desk archives, different searches, to no avail.

I remembered printing out something...it would be in a file...we got new desks this summer, and I no longer have file drawers..they're still in a bag in the trunk of my car. I went to my car, looked around in the bag, pulled out a "Horizon" folder, opened it and found the piece of paper I was looking for. It turns out the Help Desk request was made last September. Why was I able to remember that piece of paper and find it more easily than looking it up in the computerized archive?

My husband, Harold and I were talking about his day with a new helper (he's an electrician) and teaching the 18 yr. old how to read a map. This young guy expressed amazement when Harold could lean over while driving and say something like "it's going to be east of York Road right there" and make a stab at the map without being able to read it clearly. "How did you do that?" the young guy asked. Harold asked him how he got somewhere he didn't already know how to get to? Mapquest or friends whose parents had a GPS system in the car. He had no idea how to picture Baltimore as a whole and where he was going in it.

A friend who teaches music to 4th and 5th graders says her beginning students come in expecting to pick up an instrument and be able to play a song their first lesson. They are frustrated by learning how to put together and take care of the instrument first and learning about reading music. She attributes it to having things happen instantly like they do on the internet.

Coming from the "slow" world before computers, even before electric typewriters too, I have to wonder where all the technology is taking us? If nobody will be learning how to read maps and play musical instruments that don't involve plugging in or logging on what will the world be like? What happens when the electricity goes out?