For two days I suffered from NCSD (No Computer Stress Disorder).  Fortunately it was just a mild case since it involved only my desktop computer which was being repaired.  I still had a functioning iPhone, iPad and netbook otherwise I don’t know how I could have gotten through 48 hours without email.  It made me realize just how critical electronic devices have become to my daily life.  I have a few friends who refuse to use a computer, have no email, no smart phone, do not participate in social media and one, incredibly, has no answering machine.    I sometimes envy them for their electronic isolation but I cannot imagine myself returning to the days of typewriters, letters requiring stamped envelopes and telephones wired to the wall.

But I feel I am in a technological wasteland.  I am stuck somewhere between the analogue and the digital, embracing a bit of each, comfortable with the former and trying to fully understand and participate in the latter.  Yes, I confess I use facebook, (mainly to keep track of my grandchildren’s sometimes appalling behavior and it’s also relatively easy).  I have no idea how to use twitter, linkedin, flickr, chrome, cloud, pinterest, google+ and all the other things I am constantly being invited to join by giving them my email address, sex, birth date, marital status and establishing yet another password.

However, all this has made me realize the future is rushing by me and I can’t seem to catch up with it.  My two-year-old granddaughter, like all two-year-olds, is learning how to say words.  Among her first pronouncement were:  “mommy,” “daddy,” “more,” “all done,” “no” and “iPad.”  She is quite capable of turning on the device, touching the icons for Elmo, Cookie Monster, The Wheels on the Bus and her other favorite videos.  She’s takes pictures on her mother’s iPhone and once called me on mine by accident.

Kids today find it incomprehensible that we older people feel that so-called “intuitive” apps are confusing and intimidating.  When visiting my ten-year-old grandson, he amuses himself by watching my ineptitude at playing the video games he tries to teach me.  Once we downloaded a game he wanted to try on my iPad and within five minutes he knew exactly how to do it.  After we both played it several times he pointed out that his highest recorded score was 11,508 and mine was six.  I must also confess my 16-year-old granddaughter taught me how to text.

There could be a perfectly good reason why my grandchildren catch on to these e-things and I don’t. Perhaps Richard Dawkins, noted British evolutionary biologist (and famous atheist) was on to something when he coined the word “meme” in his book The Selfish Gene.  A meme is like a gene in that it passes ideas and cultural phenomena from one generation to the next.  The most useful intellectual traits evolve by natural selection much like biological evolution.  

Obviously, I do not have the video game meme and quite possibly my grandson, who has certainly got it, will pass it on to his offspring who will be even better at wielding the X-Box, playing Wii’s and understanding the latest iPhone apps.

According to some meme theory proponents, memes that are no longer useful will become extinct.  It is conceivable then,  that Google’s current successful experiments will lead to the day somewhere in the distant future when no one will know how to drive a car.   But, without doubt,  future generations will be unbelievably good at playing video games.