“Oh Granny – what is this – look?!”
“That is something I call a book.
And this is a newspaper and a magazine.
They come from a place where I have been.”
“Oh, what is this funny kind of scribbling?”
“That is something I call handwriting.”
The action of hand and eye coordination
has led to many a great creation.
And just because Granny is old-fashioned,
it doesn’t mean she can’t understand.
I know you touch letters on the tablet,
but there is something I don’t forget.
The first mechanical letters used
on a typewriter were abused.
The typists were too fast and tangled the keys,
so they slowed them down, the machines to please.
The combination of – DVORAK – at first was used,
then changed to – QWERTY – which was more diffused.
It slowed down the typists in that situation,
but we now have machine-voice activation.
And Granny really does believe
that hand-brain links help to perceive.
She doesn’t think that the technical revolution
has been an all-encompassing solution.
It is indeed a source of information,
but also a time waste on occasion.
She prefers to see a live play or concert;
watching on a machine is not a convert.
Art is second-best on a digital machine,
when seeing originals is where you have been.
And in a movie, she likes her actors real;
digitally enhanced ones are no deal.

In a book long ago Big Brother watched you.
Now digital technology is doing that too.
Whether inside or outside your house,
you are no longer anonymous.
No matter how many programs about nature you see
experiencing firsthand is where you should be.
Alone in a room playing a videogame –
instead of with people – is just not the same.
Using virtual reality goggles to see
could persuade your mind where it should be.
You can become addicted to machine dependence,
or distracted from reality – that’s common sense.
Granny says she knows she has old-fashioned ways,
but she also knows that she has seen better days.