Great yesterday to see my brother, and later nephew, both with subsets of their families, who will be the new stewards of the Dickens and and of the Dictionaries. We did some good catching up.
There are a number of old family photos and Janet and I have many of these – next autumn I hope to get them into digital form so different branches of the next generation can see them (if they want to … big if).
I guess that for both Janet and me over the next few years there will be some ‘passing on’ (transitive) to do.
Over the generations, technology has influenced how this is done.
The development of speech helped us to pass on stories (the way some of the Bible started), painting, carving, writing, printing, film, sound recording, digital media, now much stored in the cloud. And so on.
But the amount of information (and disinformation) can be overwhelming. When the whole world of information is at our fingertips, how do we know what we need to know?
We have to leave the selection in the hands of machines. The machines are very good at the job. The algorithms by which, say, Google photos finds what we’re looking for are brilliant at doing what they are asked to do.
The question is, who decides what these machines are asked to do for us? Is our freedom of choice anything more than an illusion? In advanced capitalist culture, money talks louder and in more ways than we can ever possibly understand.
So much for the diversion – to return to the point – I feel driven to pass some family culture on to the next generation. But it is naive to think that anyone will notice very much, amid the welter of information that is already flowing into their heads.
Abundant dampness,
reservoirs full to the brim:
blessing for the town.
God of truth,
as we read the Bible,
help us see ourselves
as part of its developing story.
The story goes on;
and neither has our understanding
stopped changing.
By your Spirit,
give us the joy of reading
new things in those old pages
and new discoveries in our lives.
Also we moved some bookcases around to try and get the most efficient use of space here … the work goes on!!