I

often get told by people with — what I call — a geek mentality that I spend far too much time looking backwards, whereas in fact everybody else on the planet is looking to the future.

What a lot of people don’t seem to understand, and probably never will, is that life in the early 1950s was not only hard, it was bloody hard, but what it did was instill discipline, good manners and decency into the kids less they got a good thrashing.

Sure, there was fear in that and am I glad there was. Alright, the language and how it is expressed is not to some people’s liking, but I come from a place and an environment where a spade was a spade and you didn’t question that.

Today’s world seems to be full of poofters that are happy spending all day staring at a hand phone or playing on iPads and tablet-toddlers that can’t kick a ball to save their lives. The frightening thing is the lack of character these gadgets produce, youngsters that can only relate by SMS in a language that is typically childish.

No wonder we can’t find enough engineers or kids that are interested in the sciences. Indonesia has the fastest growing social networking population in the world, which means in the not too distant future the whole nation will be sitting around gossiping about celebrities and that will really boost the economy.

Facebook and Twitter suit the advertising business, who make billions of dollars off the back of the interactions, which in turn feed the multinationals that want the lion’s share of everything.

Don’t give me this educational crap that the Internet will bring because I know it is there, 90 percent of smartphone users prefer downloading music or porno — or better still both.

And anyone that thinks that social networking was behind the Arab Spring needs a serious operation between the ears.

What caused that was absolute discontent, a poor lad’s self-immolation, a number of leaders, a total lack of freedom and massive corruption.

Mobilization in Egypt is not a huge problem as over 85 percent of the population lives virtually in one place. Sure it made the getting together easier, but never believe that such a thing would not have happened if cell phones had not been around.

Have you ever noticed when a major problem is happening like massive electrical storms or an earthquake, cell phones don’t work? You would be better off sending smoke signals if you wanted to be rescued and that is something they did 150 years ago.

David Wallis
Jakarta