Charlie, one of my ten year old sons, got a homework assignment last night. He was to use a dictionary to find the Guide Words for dfferent words. I had forgotten what Guide Words are. If you're like me, they are the words at the top of the page in a dictionary that guide the search for the word you're looking for. Guide words are an artifact of the analogue dictionary and not really needed using an online dictionary.
So, that meant finding a Dictionary. First our house. None. Then 3 nieghbors. Nope. The fourth nieghbor is a high school drama and english teacher. Sure enough, he had a few. I asked to borrow one but he kindly suggested we keep it snince he hadn't opened it up in years. I had forgotten how beautiful a great dictionary is.
While technology changes our access to new ways of doing things exponentially culture tends to change much more slowly and incrementally. There's a lot of tension between these two growth curves. And, with this tension comes selective memory.
