I am a neophiliac - a lover of new things - rather than a cultural pessimist - someone who believes that innovation will erode culture. 

In particular, the new thing that I cannot champion highly enough is the computerised technology that has changed our world in my lifetime. I was born in a time before Maths exams had a “calculator paper”, an era of red telephone boxes and fountain pens. Look how far we have come.  

I began work in 1980, fresh from university, and the computer occupied an entire building. But by 1995, the computer was a desk-top which had replaced Sally, my secretary. It didn’t bring me my morning coffee, but I could compose letters as I wrote them, correcting as I went along. It held my databases, replacing a filing cabinet or two and spreadsheets became so much easier to create and to store. There were, of course, those who complained - the cultural pessimists who resented making their own coffee and did not want to learn to touch type or lick their own envelope flap, but I was fascinated by the floppy disk, the delete button replacing the Tippex and the mouse on its little pad.  

Now, I am not young, obviously, and I don’t accept the often repeated mantra that older adults are confused by technology or don’t like technology. This is not a function of age but a function of attitude of mind. In 1995, when my desk-top arrived in my room, I went along to evening classes at a local college of further education to learn how to use Word, Access, Excel and email. There were ten of us on the course, in the main sent along by our employers to learn how to use our computers, but one was an elderly gentleman in his late eighties and keen to know how to get the most out of the tech. Why was he there? He recognised that as he was getting older, he was less inclined to go out in the cold and dark winter months and that the time might well come when he could not go out at all. He would be at home. On his own. Lonely and isolated. But not if he could email, not if he could order shopping online, not if he could reach out and communicate with the rest of the world.  

Take this one step further into the 21st century and we are bombarded with pessimist ideology surrounding our tech. Scams, identity fraud, “fake news”; but these have always been with us: the wild stories of the wet nurse substituting her own infant for that of her lord and master. Surely that is the ultimate in identity fraud. Romeo believed the fake news that Juliet was dead with disastrous results and I’m sure that the Trojans felt thoroughly scammed when a lot of Greek soldiers emerged from their gift horse. We all know who blames his tools - it is not the technology which creates the issues but those using it. PICNIC - problem in chair not in computer - is an apt expression. The issue is the user not the tech. 

Don’t think for one moment that I am belittling the issues of children being influenced by evil seen online and through social media. I am not. Our young are experiencing a significantly more toxic childhood than I ever did. But it is not the tech that is the root of the problem but the way the tech is being used by humans. Current unenlightened thinking in schools is that teenagers should not be allowed to have or use a smart phone, and this strikes me as the ultimate in throwing the baby out with the bath water and more than that, I believe it is a positively dangerous attitude to take. Having spent the last six years of my working life teaching in a school, I have seen the problems our young adults face and their phones are not the root cause. Let us consider several of the perceived problems: 

“They don’t communicate with each other. They are on their phones all the time.” They might not be talking face to face but they are communicating. The mobile phone is their means of communicating. I didn’t talk to my friends at all after school - we were not together to talk after the end of the day. “They use their phones in class to pass messages to each other”. Yes, I expect they do - we passed written notes. 

“They access material unsuitable for their age”. Yes, they do but that is not the fault of the tech but lack of supervision, lack of self discipline, lack of learning right from wrong. 

“Social media is toxic and used for cyber bullying”. But you don’t have to engage with social media and bullying is not new. In the USA, a new therapy is being developed for women with eating disorders, using social media. When a sufferer posts that they feel disgusted with themselves or out of control, supporters instantly have the ability to post a positive message, to help and offer whatever is needed to overcome a crisis. Not the tech, but the way you use it. 

When my students ask me a question, I do not always know the answer but my response is invariably, “Someone look that up, and let us all know.” They scramble for their phones and within seconds have the answer. This extra knowledge takes their learning way beyond prepping to pass an exam and becomes education (from the Latin “e or ex” meaning out and “duco” I lead. A leading out of what is already known Thank you Miss Jean Brodie) How cool is that?  

Use our tech wisely. We can become more than the sum of our individual parts. We can build resilience in each other. We can find the meaning of the universe. We should not be afraid to be a neophiliac. 

 Spark, M. (1961) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Penguin. Harmondsworth