My grandmother told my dad he had no reason to complain about rock and roll because he listend to that awful big band boogie woogie. She was of the opinion that culture disappeared when the waltz went out of fashion. The waltz, in its heyday, was called licentious because men and women faced each other at such close quarters. No matter what, the elders always find something wrong with the innovations of the young.

We go through cycles of coarseness and refinement as a regular thing. The 1920s were not such a glittering time, in spite of the flapper dresses we see. The Gilded Era, likewise, was full of children with adult knowledge living in the streets. Anyone who believes that children were not already laughing at fart and pee jokes before they appeared on television should have attended my Catholic elementary school in the 1960s. Disney has been doing underwear jokes since its first cartoon.

We started down the road toward instant knowledge with the first telegraph line, then with personal telephones in homes. The world changed, but we adjusted.

That long trip to the library wasn't so long if you lived in a town that had one, which implied a certain community wealth and attitude favoring education. Now we measure access to data in personal wealth, i.e., the ability to purchase a computer and subscribe to an internet provider. And libraries? We're online now. Sure, there's greater access to crap, but there's greater access to real knowledge and to literature, too. Still only a matter of scale: there were dime novels and pennydreadfuls when print dominated, and there was handwritten garbage before that. Far fewer literate people then, though. I count that as a gain.

I see kids ranging in age from 0 to 20 regularly, as well as young adults. Here's what I see: Children raised in ignorance are ignorant. Children raised in brutal homes are brutal. Children raised in cold homes are lonely. We take on the pathologies we are exposed to. Technology doesn't cause it. People do.

Also, kids still play sports, they still go to dances and concerts, they still go to the movies and go out to eat and talk afterward. They play board games and cards. Really. They are never so loud as when they get online in a group of two or more, because there's always a discussion about what they see on the screen. There is plenty of social interaction in real time and in the flesh. People who don't want to socialize won't socialize, but that was ever thus, too. We used to call them hermits. They also created worlds of their own, but they didn't network with codewriters to do it: they talked to the birds.

I admit I'm not a full partner in the new world, but it doesn't scare me, and I don't mourn the old one. What I mourn is my flagging ability to keep up.