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>>Life was so much simpler before ’puters were brought into every area of our lives. Better in many ways.

NEVER! My luncheon conversation with my friend of 40 years was about how wondrous the changes that computers have brought to our lives have been. I’m still absolutely awed at living at this moment of time, and cry to the sky that my mother didn’t live during this revolution of knowledge. She would have gotten onto the Internet and never gotten off.

There is nothing that I did in the past that I can’t do better today - simpler and more naturally. Even calls to my brother! I record them and give them to his daughter.

Forty years ago I blinded myself reading thru the microfilms of my college newspaper, attempting to find my father’s poetry column. Twenty years ago I had microfilm delivered to my house and scanned it into a portable computer to discover poetry that could have been written by my 5th great grandfather. Today I do newspaper subscription searches once a year to see if any antique papers have been added to the newspaper archives to upgrade my poetry collection. I’m doing the same searches for knowledge, but without the massive eyestrain and blinding headaches.

Cooking is easier when I don’t have to go through recipe magazines and can search. Finding strange ingredients becomes trivial when Amazon will send them to me with free shipping. My car used to be filled with maps before the nav system, but I fear I used to get just as lost then as I do now. Even WITH the nav system. Of course, getting lost is half the fun of getting there. And as for asking for directions, yes, you meet a lot of lovely people. Several times as you circle the building where you stopped to ask for directions which made you keep circling.

Everything we learn now, we learn deeper because the computer gets us past first blockages and lets us ask better questions than we would have asked before. If knowledge is a major part of your reason for living, THIS is the time to live.