Understanding Understanding

I wonder on occasion if I am getting too old to understand technology.

Culture, sure- I haven't understood culture since the 1960s, when I asked a friend what that song 'Angel Aquariums' was supposed to be about. I've never been much of a music freak, even then, and less so now, when I rarely hear anything on the radio that sounds worth hearing. But technology, sure, I get that. Ones and zeros, astronauts and microwaves -- sure, no problem. I've had the same feelings as many of my peers in wondering how in the world anyone could not understand how to program their VCR, even though, when I went to program my mother's, it made no sense to me. A brief moment of humility ensured, but then I was back to understanding technology. And even the things outside of what I normally do for a living were accessible to me: it took me a while to understand the scale at which nanotechnology works, but I got the basic idea, and even though I still don't really understand the idea of the Human Genome Project, I get the general idea --its something to do with DNA, right? Heck, yes, I knew that. And television displays, plasma vs LCD vs CRTs -- sure, I understand that. I get it.

But something has flipped off inside me lately. It isn't major --its not as if I look at articles about podcasting and don't understand the concept; its not as if I read an article about pattern recognition and don't understand what they're trying to say, or one about economic theory and don't see where they're heading with it. (Granted, all of these articles are written for the general public; they're not coming from the densely written things that show up in journals and theses. But still, I do understand them.) But this flipping off is almost a sense of It just doesn't matter. I don't have to understand that. Its not the same as saying that I don't want to understand all these things; I like knowing concepts in disparate fields, and being able to understand them, even as the most superficial level, pleases me. I'm still tickled to know what the difference is between translumenal and transluminal.

But for the first time, I begin to get the feeling on occasion that I don't have to understand all this stuff. Its okay to focus, to limit what I understand to what I want to understand.

Is that maturity... or senility?