HarryFictional sorcerer is a moral guide
By JOEL GARREAU
The Washington Post
I have been thinking for years now that the era through which my 15-year-old daughter has been growing up has striking parallels to the early years of baby boomers like me. For her, the 1990s meant accepting the most magical change as utterly routine. First -abracadabra! - came the Internet and then the World Wide Web. Suddenly unseen wizards conjured up cell phones the size of candy bars, palm computers smaller than a paperback book, and music players not much bigger than credit cards. These, I realized, were all end-of-century echoes of my mid-century and its television, birth control and travel to the moon.
<snip>
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
- Bob Dylan, 1964
Our children have used magic wands all their lives, raising and lowering the volume on the story boxes that they watch, controlling the narratives. It's uncanny, the way they can intuit what technology wants.
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050714/REPOSITORY/507140312