(PD) Heather Smith–The Case for Technological Foot-Dragging 

I was due to be a Gen X-er. By waiting a week past my due date, I not only lost my father his 1980 tax deduction but also became a Millennial. Not that being born in the first few days of a sociologically designated generation (or claiming a cool label like “Cusper” or “Xennial”) is really that much of a distinction. But I have come to realize that entering one’s generational cohort at the beginning of an arbitrary twenty-year span means not being quite so wholly subsumed in the zeitgeist as are one’s slightly younger peers.  

Add to that a family whose scant middle-class means and slight Luddite tendencies meant that we were never technological early adopters. Multiply that by a choice to homeschool when such an election still produced a marked cultural wince. Subtract any culturally defiant choices such as those of my friends who did not even own a television. It totals a childhood not outside the mainstream culture—certainly not paddling against it—but holding water as the cultural drift moved us all along.  

From the vantage point of midlife, I am deeply grateful for an upbringing that walked through the ’80s and ’90s with a good deal of cultural foot-dragging, but I have also come to believe that this sort of cautious, reluctant, belated travel through innovation is beneficial to everyone in every generation at every time. Most of us cannot drop off the grid, but almost all of us can wait a little longer before buying into new technologies for our homes and families. These small “not yet” choices help to form us and our children into more intentional and humane people, better able to use technology than to be used by it, and to assess the loss that accompanies technological advance as well as the obvious gains.  

I can remember the time before my family bought our first microwave. Or television with a remote control. Or cordless phone. Or VCR. Or computer. Moreover, in most cases, I also recall a vague, childish knowledge of the grownup discussions going on for months before such innovations were ceremoniously purchased and ensconced in our home. In the haziness of memory at least, I am aware of a prevailing ethos that we didn’t really need that new technology, not in any pressing way.  

Read it all.