Briefly, then gotta get started on working in an abbreviated Thanksgiving week…

Every so often I find myself in a situation with family or work and realize that something’s different, something’s new – and I try to take myself out of the moment a little bit to notice it.

This morning at the breakfast table, as I was packing up and getting ready to head into work, I was half-listening to SPL and his babysitter – they were talking in Mandarin to each other – but when I looked up, the subject matter was one of my own books from when I was a kid: Richard Scarry’s Busytown. And that caused me to think about how many of the little vignettes of our morning were incredibly traditional, but also incredibly modern.

• Kathy & I had already read the morning’s news – but me from my laptop news reader and Kathy was scanning through on her iPhone – we haven’t gotten a daily or weekly newspaper for probably 10 years

• We were all dressed appropriately for the weather – but not because of information in the paper or the morning TV news, but over the Web, naturally

• SPL & his babysitter, reading Busytown, but talking about it in Mandarin

Anyway, today felt like a rich combination of new and old to me – and, really, something that felt very California modern. I have a sense/hope that 20 years from now the differences will be not so much about information usage but about materials and energy usage. We’ll see, I suppose.