Skip to main content

List Making

Even when Umberto Eco talks about something as mundane as a list, he can give the reader enough to ponder over for days. The interview makes for fascinating reading as does anything written by Eco.
SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can't be realistically completed?
Eco: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.
It would be hard to look at to-do or shopping lists the same again after reading this. Of Google Eco has this to say :
Google makes a list, but the minute I look at my Google-generated list, it has already changed. These lists can be dangerous -- not for old people like me, who have acquired their knowledge in another way, but for young people, for whom Google is a tragedy. Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating.
There is something reactionary and hidebound in not wanting children to grow too dependent on Google and learn to source information from other sources the more painful, old fashioned way. I am guilty of doing this myself. Weaning kids off Google is difficult because it so dramatically simplifies their lives. Spending a few minutes doing a search on their topic is all takes kids to get their job done. As a parent who grew up before the internet happened, it is probably natural to worry about a child's absolute dependence on Internet search fearing that it can kill intellectual curiosity and make a young person flat out lazy.
Labels:

Comments

LIFE_REFACTORED said…
I think what you have described is called 'Evolution'. I say this because, I'm reminded of my younger days when my grandma used to complain that the Sumeet Mixie made things too easy and cooking will never be the same. My father complained that cell phones were a bane and no one needed it since we have always managed to survive without it for what thousands of years. My own fear is the Google is a Skynet in making. But I guess we are in this sea called life, we cannot make its rules, we cannot change the tide, nor can we stop the wind, but the sail we can raise and lower, the rudder we can steer, the oars we can pull. This sea keeps changing, so must we like we have for all these thousands of years.
yaawn... .what have i become...i must go and watch a good masala movie to shake myself awake
6:01 AM
Heartcrossings said…
Life Refactored - So true about the Sumeet Mixie - I can't remember the last time I ate a home cooked meal that did not involve the use of modern appliances and pre-mixed pastes and spices. My grandmother used to do everything the long form, old fashioned way but she is over eighty now and ailing.
7:44 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more