My Generasi is a YouTube video short produced by Malaysian filmmakers JinnyBoyTV on the good old primary school days. As an 80’s baby, I could really relate to the video. But the more I think about my generasi, the more I think that perhaps someday…
1. We no longer know how to write
In Primary 1, we had an entire subject called TULISAN, which is Malay for ‘writing’. It required a different type of exercise book – not the ruled paper for languages nor the square boxes for Mathematics. It was a mixture of skinny and fat lines printed on red ink, designed for practicing alphabets in cursive – producing entire pages of A, a, B, b, C, c and so forth. With the ubiquity of computers, tablets and smart phones, there may be no need to write at all in the future as everything is typed electronically.
2. We can no longer read maps
Sometimes, I feel embarrassed that I carry an AA road atlas in my car. With Google Maps, TomTom and Garmin (whose tagline is “You’ll be lost without it!”), there’s no need to use our brains in this day and age. We’re simply told by a machine that does all the work for us, rendering paper maps pretty much obsolete. Map reading is a mental exercise, and this means many of us will lose the skill and patience to explore, discover and work out our surroundings.
3. We no longer have to talk
With Whatsapp, iMessage, Skype and emails at work, we could virtually have a virtual relationship with the people around us. Think about it, there’s actually no need to open our mouths. Our dependence on GPS means there’s no need to ask for directions, our tap-on tap-off EZ Link cards means there’s no need to communicate with the bus driver, all our work is done over emails, all our comments on Facebook, all our conversations on Gtalk – voila!
Wan Phing Lim 