Unplugged

At the University of Pennsylvania commencement ceremonies today, Google CEO Eric Schmidt urged grads to unplug and live "analog" for a while. This even as Goole's new search offerings are designed to pull one deeper down the super-nano-hyper-techno rabbit hole.

While watching this clip from the Today Show on NBC (text version, if you prefer) , my brain briefly wandered to the concept of early intervention for tech-isolated kids. Then the memory of a voice jolted me back to reality--"you kids stop playing those records so loud!" I resisted the temptation to jump into the fuddy-duddy pigeon hole and moved on.

The most laughable statement (as reported with journalistic earnestness by Matt Lauer) is this: "The biggest challenge was figuring out what to do with all the time he [David Silver] now had on his hands." Seriously? David's initial reaction to the situation? He described the experience as “chaos … just because you don’t know what to do, so you’re freaking out sometimes.”

Yes, free time. What to do? Perplexing.

Maybe the one girl can learn how to read time on a wall clock.

Are the days of "go outside and play" and "be home when the street lights come on" really gone?

Another voice, that of Peter Falk as the grandfather in The Princess Bride, comes to mind: "That's right, before television we had BOOKS."

Which brings me to the story of a mother with young four daughters (no this is not an Austen or Alcott novel synopsis), all of whom loved to read. One day she brought home a book and the girls began to bicker about who would get to read it first. The mother intervened, briefly: "figure out how to share it, or I'll take it away and none if you will get to read it."

The solution that presented itself was simple. All four girls piled into bed and took turns reading. Aloud. To each other. And thus began many happy lifetimes of unplugged diversions (not to mention countless hours of procrastination).

Verlyn Klinkenborg offers some thoughts on the lost art of reading aloud in this editorial observation from yesterday's New York Times. (Bonus points to VK for referencing the reading aloud of Shakespeare IN an Austen novel.) Read it aloud to whomever happens to be nearby.