This blog post was written by Melissa Balan, director of Sanskriti, and originally published on Nameless the Movie. View the original post: http://nameless-the-movie.com/blog/young-filmmaker-its-ok-if-were-defined-by-our-relationship-with-technology/
Last month I took a few days off work and flew from my home in NYC down to Florida to escape the cold weather and spend some time with my grandparents, known to me as Nana and Papa. One lazy evening, after we rented a DVD from the library to watch, my Nana told me she was glad I was there to help, as they rarely ever watch movies at home because they can never get the DVD player to work.
Amused, I began to set up the DVD. The screen turned fuzzy, and displayed a message that there was no media signal. Confused and disheartened at its apparent malfunction, my Nana asked what to do next, and began to give up. Without much thought, I simply assumed a cable had come loose, and reached behind the media stand, jiggling a few wires. It was, to me, an obvious solution, and the video was easily restored.
My Nana seemed amazed at my insight, gazing at me as if I was some sort of Technology Whisperer. When I explained that it had been a straightforward and self-explanatory solution and told her the steps I took, she shook her head, threw her hands into the air, and walked out of the room, mumbling, “Chinese! It’s all Chinese!”
It was an entertaining and endearing encounter, and highlighted to me the vast differences between our generations. Millennials and our relationship with technology was a topic that had been on my mind during the months leading up to the DVD Player Encounter, as I’ve been working on a documentary film that explores that very theme, and it was fascinating that something so obvious to me, so second nature, could be so mind-boggling and perplexing to someone just 50 years older. Even my mother, just one generation behind myself, often seems to me so behind the times, having only discovered texting as a legitimate means of communication just last year.
It’s been said that we Millennials are defined by our relationship with technology. When I first heard this, I felt slightly indignant – being defined by something so trivial and elementary struck me as almost insulting. Surely there is more to us than being able to operate a computer or smartphone, mindless tasks a child could perform. It felt comparable to being “defined” by the ability to tie our shoes or brush our teeth. But this brief encounter with my Nana and her DVD player suddenly pushed everything into perspective. Something that, for me, was as simple as tying my shoes was, to her, as complicated as something like multivariable calculus.
We don’t often think about how we as Millennials have been so deeply affected by growing up in today’s technological world. Computers, smartphones, Internet, everything digital, everything connected – it’s simply how we live our lives, and I know at least for myself, a world without these tools is literally impossible to conceptualize. Though for every generation before us, it is our way of life that seems alien, unimaginable, and strange. So I realized then – yes, we are defined by our relationship with technology. And though the use of technology seems to us perhaps trivial, second nature, or elementary, it’s anything but. We’re in the middle of, and actually helping to lead, a technological revolution that is transforming the way society operates, and that’s pretty exciting.
Sanskriti 