As much as I
manage to "keep up" with the changes in technology in these modern times, there
are still moments when I am held completely in awe.
There was an
item online the last couple of days. You may have seen it. It wasn't even really
immediate news, and yet there it was taking up cyberspace. Apparently, last
year, in the city of Leicester, in England, human remains were discovered under
a parking lot. I guess that sort of thing happens a lot in England and Europe.
Their recorded history is far more extensive than ours.
Most often here,
in North America, if someone is demolishing a building or digging a new
foundation and they discover bones, the question that comes most often to mind
is, "did I just find a recent murder victim?" Over on the other side of the
pond, where recorded history stretches much further back, other questions come
to mind.
They must have
had some suspicions on who those bones belonged to, because they conducted DNA
tests in order to be sure. Those tests have now confirmed that the remains
discovered are of King Richard III.
That in itself
is pretty impressive, don't you think? That hundreds of years after a man is
dead, his descendants (how many generations removed is that, anyway?) can
provide a sample to prove genealogy.
Better yet, and
what certainly gave me a few creepy moments, was the fact that the bones
included the skull, and with modern scientific means, experts were able to
perform a "facial reconstruction"—giving us a fairly accurate likeness of what
this not-so-glorious king actually looked like.
Holy time
travel, Batman.
When I first set
eyes on that reconstruction, knowing that it wasn't a painting created in his
day and influenced by the painter's own bias, I shivered. It just seemed so
other-worldly to me that such a thing is possible—that I could be looking at the
actual face of a long dead person.
Of course, I've
long known about the science of facial reconstruction. I know it has been used
to help identify bodies when no other means has worked. I understand the
concept. Heck, I've even read fiction in which the heroine was just such a
scientist/artist. It's just that to use this method to give us a picture of
someone dead for so long—someone I studied in high school and who Shakespeare
used in a play, is eerie.
At least it is
to me.
I'm kicking at
the gate of 60, and the world has changed so much just in my lifetime. It's no
wonder to me that older people begin to feel disconnected. It's really hard to
keep up.
The most notable
area, of course, where the enormity of this "change" has become manifest, is in
this thing, right here. The computer. I joke with friends and family that my
first computer was an abacas.
Only it's not a
joke.
Thirty years
ago, there was no Internet. The significance of that for me is profound. Today,
I make my living on the Internet, and in fact, this computer of mine and the
various places and people it connects me to quite literally make up my
life.
Of all the
things for which I'm grateful, this is the biggest: that for the most part, if
I'm not right on top of all the new developments coming down the pike, I'm at
least connected.
I can at least
see the contrails of the speeding jet before me.
Love,
Morgan
No comments:
Post a Comment