There’s no smoke but maybe some learning is burning?

There’s muffled murmuring in the background but no loud music, no unexpected truck or post deliveries, no obvious waste or smell and, amazingly, no significant demand on the Bank of Mum & Dad, but surely there is something going on in there.

It’s clearly not a complete secret – judging by footsteps on the stairs and occasional giggles – but she’s not for telling us, leastways not yet.

Ma says she should get more air. ‘Not good to be cooped up in that room all day’.   I’d like more conversation during meals but often now she doesn’t show up and when she does join us we get evasion and ‘you wouldn’t understand’.  Does anyone really need earphones at breakfast?

It’s clearly important, this life-changing stuff but the only way we can help, it seems, is to give the space, not ask annoying questions and make sure we all have even more connectivity.

This trust, this faith we have, this uncertainty is being tested.  Even her ‘what would he know’ older brother, has no clue and has resorted to casting aspersions.  But he’s off to uni in few weeks so, blessed relief; at least we’ll not have to endure that sibling rivalry.

‘Really, you should have a word’.  ‘Why me?‘ Parental Ping-Pong, batting back and forth, is a game for reluctant players.  ‘About what?‘  ‘What if?‘

The small mysteries of the digital revolution can be happening anywhere.  How things can flip from lonely localised passion to global success, how those tiny tweaks can make a huge difference, can never be explained.

Her only guiding rule, it seems, is “Screw it – let’s do it”, or, more forcibly, “Just (F) Do It”, or as we old stagers marvelled back when Net was new, ‘ Innovation Without Permission’.   That ‘so last century’ constraint of seeking permission does not now trouble young digitally liberated minds.

So relax, rejoice in their empowerment.  The world has moved on since some of us threw away the brakes of copper-constrained wires.  There is no going back.  Sit back, enjoy the ride, and hope they make a better job of it than your own tentative last generation efforts.

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Tags: broadband, digital, empowerment, learning, NextGen