I have collected cookbooks for years. I’ve even created my own cookbook cutting out interesting and unique recipes from newspaper and magazines. One evening, I decided to make spinach quiche for dinner and began searching through my collection to find one without too many ingredients and not too difficult to make. While going through my cookbooks, my head buried behind the pile, my niece walked into the room. “Auntie, what are you doing?” I looked up at her and down at her hand in which she held her cellphone. an appendage attached to her hand as she seldom puts it down. When I told her, she said simply, “Why don’t you just goggle it.”
“Google it?” I asked. She peered down at her phone while tapping on the screen. Within seconds, she pulled up several recipes for spinach quiche and showed them to me. I was impressed. In response to many questions I have about anything and everything, her response is always “just goggle it.” Reluctant to give up the method I’ve used for so many years, I began to reconsider. Faced with the dilemma whether to move into the 21st century, I pondered, should I toss out my old cookbooks or keep them for old time sake; though I could use the space.
This makes me think about how many changes we face as technology advances. How many of us are torn between the old ways and the new? I won’t go into moving from the corded phone to the cordless, to the cell phone; from large, unwieldly maps to Goggle map or GPS etc.
I decided to keep my cookbooks for now; haven’t gotten up the courage to get rid of them and I’m not sure I want to. But when I need a recipe, I use the internet. It’s faster and easier. I still carry a box with those large maps in the trunk of my car though I use GPS and Goggle maps whenever I travel. Bottom line, because of so many advances in technology, things have gotten much easier on the one hand. On the other hand, I’ll miss those days when it took time to find the answer to a problem. There is something to be said about nostalgia.