CHILDREN AND COMPUTERS

I realize we are now in the era of High-Technology.

- BY GOOLBAI GUNASEKARA

The age of the Computer began when I was well into adulthood and I have been scurrying ever after adapting for these last many years. Anyone who is not computer savvy is being left behind, trying hard to make sense of what people around are saying and doing. The first time I actually succeeded in using a computer I almost gave a party.In the running of a School Office it was imperative for me to master these new techniques, I had to progress, although 'progression' was not the word I used. It was sheer desperation since all around me...Secretaries, Office workers, Telephone operators etc. were completely savvy. Learning to cope became vital and I muddled through somehow much to the derision of my personal Secretary who was a true expert herself.

We now have 'AI' in our lives to further bewilder those of us who grew up in an era when books and human contact were our only portals to knowledge. Radios helped. TVs came much later. After I married in fact.

This general bewilderment at the rate of change is carried over into a person's travels. Staying in Hotels however expensivenecessitates some knowledge of modern technologyeven to the making of coffee which is now done in one's own hotel bedroom by one's self! On one of my trips abroad I made an overnight stay in London. The Hotel had no personal service but provided a coffee maker in my bedroom. The maid who showed me to my room explained how it worked but to my completely untutored self I did not get it. I went coffee-less the next morning.

However, all this new knowledge must be controlled. Do modern parents realise the grave danger they are taking when they put a computer into the immature hands of children around age seven and then wonder why they are not more outgoing and interested in what is happening around them?