news&views Spring 2019 | Page 8

Editorial Margaret Sadler | Associate Editor, news&views The Change Gene I’ve just spent two weeks with a ninety-one-year-old who’s annoyed that I don’t understand what it’s like to be ninety-one in this technological age. It’s true that I’m not over ninety, so I am limited, but then I submit that she doesn’t understand what it is to be sixty-eight in this era. We both check our email regularly and she’s been known to google topics she’s curious about. But it’s the old story of one generation not ‘getting’ another, isn’t it? Even within the category of ‘seniors’ these days, there are different generations. So much changes from one decade to the next that our experience in each stage of life is different from the previous generation’s experience. A great uncle is quoted in 1910 as not getting work at the new Ford business in Detroit, since Henry Ford claimed he had all the workers he’d ever need. Our favourite quote from my grandfather when he heard that the 401 highway was being built across southern Ontario in 1950 was that “there’ll never be enough cars to fill it.” My mother would be amused to hear people apparently chatting to themselves in a public place today. It’s a challenge for us to accept change and yet we’ve lived through — and have apparently accepted — a lot of our own changes. My nephew — who was born when I was a teenager — is now a grandfather. That alone 8 | arta.net is amazing to me but in other news, he didn’t learn the imperial system of measurement, only the metric. Did you learn to calculate math problems on a slide rule? How many other technologies have changed in your lifetime? How then do we expect things to stop now? Why do we want things to stay the same? Apparently, death and taxes are the only certainties. Everything else will change, which means that we can’t rewind time and do things the way they used to be done. Neither governments nor businesses can be run like it is still 1960. But we needn’t despair: there’s always hope — hope that the human spirit and innovation will carry us safely into this new world. New technologies cover an amazing range of possibilities from making it easier to keep in touch with loved ones to saving lives; from simplifying meal preparation to capturing the energy of the sun to power a household. Medicine, technology, and even the United Nations have already reduced many tragic situations—plague, famine, world wars. Universal health care, public infrastructure, and Indigenous reconciliation efforts have all made our Canada a better place. We don’t know what will come next, futurists notwithstanding. We don’t know what the world will look like in a generation. Our own picture of life in ten years is, no doubt, small when held up to eventual reality. Within that changing world is the inevitable change of the familiar. Just as society changes, so do parts of that society. Rotary clubs, Kinsmen clubs, the Order of the Eastern Star, Freemasonry, churches — aren’t what they used to be… and won’t be what they