This weekend was Thanksgiving here in the US. For the first time in many years I spent it with family. Some of them I hadn't seen in as long as 10 years. Some as little as 4...The reasons I won't go into but suffice it to say, all twenty of us at one table was a lot. Since I've gotten sick I overload easily and 4 days was enough stimulation to last me until next year.
One of the defining qualities of my life is an inability to belong to a group. It's not that I don't want to - I wouldn't mind finding a "place" of comfort and belonging. I just don't fit in well. Too often I find myself observing. But, I fake it well enough that I tend to enjoy myself more often than not, and most people don't know. It works. But not with my family. Sometimes, I think I sprouted in a garden and someone whom I look like picked me.
Bitching about my family is not what this entry is about.
Early in the first day I noticed that I had to be very careful with my language. This is difficult for me because I've made it a point when speaking to use as broad a vocabulary as possible; I do this so that my meaning is clear and concise. Nothing irks me more than when people try to interpret what I mean based upon their own assumptions. (It's odd, I don't do this with writing when the norm is to use a broader vocabulary when writing.) But, in doing so I found I made several people uncomfortable. I know this for a fact because I was accused of using "$2 words".
Later, I was relating an anecdote that I found amusing about a friend of mine and how we'd argued about genetic determination and recessive/dominant genes and I was shocked he'd never heard of Mendel's Peas. We're 14 years apart in age and I haven't kept up with biology journals for the last 4-5 years so I'd not heard that eye color was no longer based upon a single trait. Because of our age difference, he knew this. I was adamant in my stance. We were both correct based upon what we learned.
The people I was talking to? I lost them at the word genetics.
I'd decided to do some browsing with their computer and couldn't understand why, on a cable modem, it was so damned slow. The next day, I couldn't install Adobe Reader. A little looking and I'd found damaged sectors on the hard drive and noticed that Windows ME had never been updated. So, I started with Service Pack 1 from 2001. When I explained the maintenance I did I saw that glazed look again.
I've been working with computers in general since the Commodore 64. I did homework on a Vic20, an Apple IIc and IIe and one of the first Macs. I did this in the home of the people I was now speaking to. My home business used to be outsource Medical Billing for Physician Offices - done online. I am of an age that had to learn to stop writing everything down before typing it but could be trained to do so. Computers have always been a part of my life. I've been working with gaming support sites for 7 years; I've been in the Games Press for five.
My mom said to me, "now that you're into this, what will we have to talk about?" Apparently, I've mutated beyond human.
This is a lot of set-up for my point.
We spend our days in this virtual world with each other. I was in a home with 20 people. The only other people that spend time in this virtual world were my ex and my own children. That left 16 people who are completely ignorant of the Wii, the PS3, Windows Vista (hell, Windows XP), YouTube, Myspace and all of the other social gathering places we take for granted. They don't know about copyright issues with abandonware - they don't know or care about abandonware. Two of them owned a computer and as I said, I spent time updating Windows ME on one.
75% were partially to completely ignorant.
They didn't have iPods, HDTVs, PS2s - though 3 had cellphones (6 if you count myself, my ex and my kids). I am the only one who blogs. No one other than my immediate family and my sister had heard the term blog. All of them except for me still owned VHS tapes (some had both VHS and DVDC - I simply own no VHS). This includes my ex.
The referred to me as a techhie. I'm not a technophile by any means, just compared to them.
And it leads me to wonder about those of us who live in this virtual world of ours and take everything so damned seriously...
Should we not slow down just a little bit and look at the (very probable) 75% of the population behind us?
