Lately...

Lately I've been spending a lot of time in the library scanning a reference book for research purposes. I often see this really old man in a wheel chair seated at one of the desks, surrounded by various reading material. He's either perusing the material or sleeping on the desk. I saw him today at the bottom of the stairs and he appeared to be motionless or sleeping. But, in any case I felt a little concerned because it is out of the ordinary to be sitting in a wheel chair at the base of stairs, sleeping on a college campus.

But, it got me thinking of how quickly times change. He's reading actual books (for fun, I assume), whereas the majority of students are seated at computers or have thier laptops open. I wonder if perhaps he wouldn't be able to see the text on the computer screen or have the manual dexterity for navigating a mouse and pressing keys in close proximity to each other. Or it could simply be that technology has passed him by and he is not too interested. On the other hand, I was talking to an elderly secretary the other day who had very poor vision. Her glasses that she wore on her face looked like magnifying glasses. She said that if it were not for the adjustability of the font size on computers she would not have that job, for she could not see anythinig with a typewriter.

I wonder what life will be like for me when I am that age. Will there be another huge technological boom that will leave me in the dust, making our advanced society of today seem antiquated? I hope I am like my grandmother, who in her 80's is busy internet surfing and creating her own websites (I don't even know how to do that!)