Parenting and Today's Digital Realities

[0:00] Good morning, everyone. Great to see everybody here. I'm excited to come out and take your time off on a busy Saturday.!

[0:30] I haven't done a presentation or a teaching in a little while in terms of this. Usually it's the other things. But I hope that it's informative.

[0:42] I'll give you a little background on myself. Hopefully it gets through a little bit of the butterflies with this new audience and everything else. Once in a while, the church that I attend at CFI, we do sermonettes and I will be able to speak.

[0:58] But you know when you get used to persons you normally see, you can speak like family. When you speak in front of strangers, it'll just be a different story. So, what are we going to do?

[1:10] Pastor Morris, just to give you a background on how I ended up here. Pastor Morris always said, every time he saw me, he says, hey, I'm going to ask you to speak at a seminar. I'd like to do something in digital.

[1:22] And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I figured I was just somebody just saying something. I'm not going to answer the usual. So, you figured nobody would fall upon their word.

[1:34] But Pastor Morris actually fall upon his word and he invited me to speak at his choice to help enhance and to grow. Not only his fellowship, but to reach out to anybody that's willing to come in and see how they could properly raise their children.

[1:52] So, I'm hoping that we could, that can be achieved today. And no doubt the prayer that we had prior to beginning the seminar will be fulfilled. So, I've been in the information, electronics and information technology for the past 25 years, just to give you a little background.

[2:10] And I have worked on a number of projects throughout the, in the industry locally. And did a few volunteer stuff away, you know, with some friends when I went on vacation and end up putting a whole church thing, project for the youth, for their youth group and so forth.

[2:32] So, just to give you an idea.

[2:48] So, I've had a bit of, a lot of it. Now, what was surprising is that we're going to be talking about digital dangers and everything else. Most of my career in the security is being rare in the infancy of social media.

[3:00] Companies considered it a, they didn't, they considered it very harmful for productivity. So, a lot of my time was really spent blocking and being, showing that, you know, the company internet that they were spending so much money on wasn't being used to, for idle hands.

[3:19] So, that, because I ended up blocking it so much, I didn't use it as much, for within the context of myself, because every time, every place I ended up, it was primarily blocked.

[3:30] And, but now companies, it's amazing to flip. Companies are now having to embrace it because that's the, they're using that as a communication medium to be able to talk to, to their clients on a one-to-one basis.

[3:44] So, a part of myself is I'm married. And so, I think that gives me something to appreciate what parenting is about.

[3:56] And I can understand what Pastor Moore says is this is an, in a long time process. My child is, both are sophomore students. And, it doesn't seem like it's going to end anytime soon.

[4:10] So, it seems like when I said, when I got married, when they say for better or for a race, for a short part, I didn't, at that time, I didn't think about the child. And that was, you know, until death do us part, along with the children.

[4:21] So, I have two daughters, Courtney and Tyler. And one is currently in university. And the other one is a sophomore at QC, Queens College, for those who may not be familiar with the app in here.

[4:38] So, I'm going to give two, I'm going to give a couple stories to help lighten the Lord in terms of this parenting in the digital, and the digital, today's digital changes.

[4:52] And one of the stories is the Ari Nut story. And I explain that, and then I'm going to do a small, little snippet of something to, which will sort of be a segue into the seminar two session.

[5:07] And the other one is upgrade my content. Am I mature, am I mature enough to upgrade my content? And before I get into that story, I see there's a good, diverse group of others.

[5:24] So, I'm going to try and speed it through. Remember when we didn't have to think about securing things digitally? We had the telephone. I recall my parents, we had this one telephone, and they refused to get this two-way call, and so you could never be on the phone too long.

[5:41] And so then we moved on to the, we had one, most famous films had one television. You know, so we all remember seeing that big old TV set. So, to control the content during our lifetime when we were growing up, you just had to sit in the, you know, they could have just controlled it.

[5:57] Whatever was in the front room, that was it. Then technology moved to where we had the videotape story, you know, you plug in the one VHS.

[6:08] So, content was still, you could see, very static, almost singular, was in multitude of things. Then we moved to the Walkman.

[6:19] So, they started to get a little bit more rare. You no longer have to be tethered, you know, to your living room and so forth. You could now carry it on your side and so forth. Then we had the antenna.

[6:34] So, we were picking up content from locally. Some of us were lucky enough to either be living in Grandmama, as I did for a while. So, we got the, you know, the South Florida stations ready to clear, whereas over here in New Providence, you sort of had to be excited.

[6:50] Somebody had to hold the rabbit ears and say, you know, is it clear yet? So, we, our content was basically primarily sadness. And we know how that went, you know.

[7:03] And so, again, content was very simple for us growing up and for children. So, I'm sure everybody then saw that we had, we then, we, this just shows the growth in terms of how we wanted more content.

[7:19] We wanted to be, our attention span, as Pastor Mar said earlier, just became more and more hungry for it.

[7:32] So, every little house over here had a big satellite. And that was part of what I did in my early days in electronics. It was a satellite engineer in terms of working with one of the largest satellite providers over here at that time.

[7:47] So, we were installing this thing like five a day and that thing and almost every home had it. So, then we, you then had the digital satellite box, if those who are satellite.

[8:00] And this is where that content that Pastor Mar talked about earlier started to become more open into our homes. Because, I'm, there were a lot of homes where, if you recall, satellite content at that time was open.

[8:17] You got a hundred plus channels, you know, before they started to lock it down and everybody said, did you get the code? Did you get, you know, and you had to buy this and that. So, content was being delivered practically in our homes.

[8:30] And these boxes at that time, they had some digital parental controls in it. I doubt any of us really exercised those things.

[8:41] And then you had certain satellites you could have locked out because there were certain satellites that were like C-SPAN rated. And then there were certain satellites that had, I remember this guy, a friend had, he used to tell me, but he was a Church of God guy.

[8:57] And he said, man, you got to watch this guy. And he said, and this guy used to be sitting there talking like an MSNBC editor. And he used to be smoking his cigar and he'd be just going off all day. I can't remember his name right now.

[9:08] So, we were all exposed to this type of thing where you go over to your friend who had the satellite, if you didn't have it, and you watch the content. Or they recorded on VHS tape and then it'd be passed around the neighborhood.

[9:20] So, that's how we bypassed a lot of the, if we had regulations in our home to be able to watch content, we figured out a way around it. And, you know, it'd be networking with your friends or your school makes or whatever to do it.

[9:34] Then we moved to the cell phone. They were very rudimentary, send text, black and white. We could now make calls and everything else. So, again, we are fast-forwarding where things are getting closer and closer and more personalized, where we have it on ourselves.

[9:53] Then, as we are now teenagers or having children, we decided to have to buy the personal gaming consoles.

[10:07] Anybody remember games such as Mortal Kombat? Right. And so, you had these games that were coming out. They moved from the Donkey Kong where you jump up and ping pong tables and so forth, where they started to have, what we call game changes or first-person shooters such as Doom and Mortal Kombat.

[10:30] I used to play a lot of that. And so, that used to be the neighborhood who was going to be able to do the final thing where you suddenly see the head cut off and so forth.

[10:43] At that time, it didn't seem that bad. And your parents didn't really check, you know, what was going on. You just had the game where you go over to the friends. Those who parents didn't run checking to and they bought the games with no video content.

[10:58] But the video content and gaming content wasn't as controlled and we weren't concerned about, we didn't have a lot of school shootings and the like. And so, we all thought it was harmful at that time.

[11:11] Correct? Harmless. Harmless. Right. We missed the days where we were on our bicycles and choppers and everything else. You know, everything was going that way. And the old days of the postal mail where you had to write a letter to your pen pals and so forth.

[11:26] So, this was all content that was all sort of static. They took time. They weren't as moving at the speed of light, as we said earlier.

[11:37] When we went to school, we caught the coaster bus or the regular bus. So, that was very easy. And we had the digital, we had 35 millimeter or Polaroid cameras at the time.

[11:51] So, this thing where you see a body coming across in your WhatsApp was impossible. You know, that had to be a special moment for you to go lug around that big camera. And if you wanted to really do videos, then you had to carry that big device.

[12:06] Fast forward, we hit in the late 90s, 2000s. We got the modem. We now have internet.

[12:17] Then, we got these personal devices, big graphics for the video games. Now, Mortal Kombat's moved to the carjacking, so forth.

[12:28] You can now buy your child a handheld portable. So, now they're getting the games. Now, they're hungry for games because now you can carry it and play it anywhere. And I'm going to speak a little bit more to the personal console and see how that was being used.

[12:42] And now, we had the digital. Everything is now moving digital now, as you can see. We have now the digital cameras. We have the iPods and the phones and now the power in the palm of your hands.

[12:57] And then, you have the iPod. And then, suddenly now, boom, 2000. If you weren't aware of the internet and you couldn't afford to sacrifice your one phone line and go through the frustrations with the provider at the time and not be able to get on, you suddenly have broadband.

[13:18] Welcome to Rev1 and cable TV and everything else. And this is where content for everything that you saw earlier is now in that one cable coming into your home that you're paying 100 plus dollars for that's in your hand.

[13:36] And then, what promoted the growth was Wi-Fi. Everybody is looking for Wi-Fi. If you don't have Wi-Fi, it's almost like living without water nowadays. It seems to be somebody, you know, besides the power.

[13:49] And so, then, we have tablets. So, now, we have a consolidation of all the technologies, basically. You have the iPad or a tablet. Now, it has a camera on it. You can run your videos.

[14:01] You have your telephone. A phone. So, all those things that we were dealing with back in the early 80s that, you know, that were basically an anchor. You didn't want to carry it. It's now portable. And now, it's in your hands.

[14:13] And all that is carrying digital content because you now have access to Wi-Fi and internet. And so, that we never really thought about the dangers because everything is moving fast-paced.

[14:24] And how do we move coming and preparing for the 21st century? So, we had to remove the computers. And also, our TVs now are also our intelligent devices.

[14:37] They're talking about internet of things and so forth. So, even your refrigerators are all going to be connected in some way. So, when we had this consolidation of tablets and everything else, the world had to figure out, how are we going to get content?

[14:54] And it all started at some point when we started to use Napster. I don't know if those remember Napster. Because, remember, we had the satellite. So, we were accustomed to getting this free content coming to our doorstep.

[15:07] Then, suddenly, Canada and the U.S. started to lock it down. So, we couldn't find the codes. And then, suddenly, we heard about things like Napster. Because, now, you could download, you know, the latest, you know, hip music from Kadash.

[15:20] You know, whomever is out there. And bring it onto one of your portable devices. And then, you have streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and whatever.

[15:32] But, just before I didn't show it on here was that you had content where, because we were, the culture over here was that we didn't respect copyright in a way.

[15:45] And so, you know, the guys used to be selling, well, they still sell the DVDs, I think, on the road. Or, we'd go to the place that had the copy VHS. This is all content we all wanted. And, we just made it more convenient now where we don't have to go to the store, look for the guy on the side of the road, and see if you're going to get something that's being filmed as if you were sitting in the theater.

[16:07] And, this is all, as a result, we are really willing to, because they locked down in one area, our work around is now we just stream some content.

[16:18] And, what has happened is, is when we had the VHS tapes before, for example, was that we weren't exposed to a lot of content because they had, they had those devices geographically locked.

[16:30] In other words, if there was some movie that was being filmed, you would probably never reach this region or, you know, sort of something that was in the UK. Now, with these streaming services, access to a lot of content where countries are a little bit more liberal than where we are right now are available to your fingertips.

[16:46] So, you feel that you have a, you have a very diverse thing. So, the things that Pastor Martin mentioned earlier, in terms of these things being discussed in Canada or the UK or Israel or wherever, they are at your fingertips.

[17:03] And, you have to recognize that some of these countries are very liberal in the way that they, that they watch programming. For instance, I remember being in the UK and you wouldn't get profanity on the regular stations.

[17:15] It wasn't blocked anything else, but nudity is, is commonplace on TV. Just like how you have Zedness, they all show most of it. Whereas, over here in the US, that may be something with, you'd have to subscribe to the cable beyond the basic channels.

[17:31] So, all that content from all over the world, which have different levels of liberalization in terms of how they see that, is now coming here, into your, into your palm of your hands.

[17:44] So, parenting in the digital world, I'm going to focus on one or two things related to things like YouTube, as an example.

[17:57] And, one of the things that really pushed, I think, things over, is, is, uh, subject, well, a content provider called YouTube.

[18:08] And, that was basically, I think, uh, catapult in us wanting content for, for, um, looking at things on the internet.

[18:22] And, because you could have posted just about, or uploaded just about any type of content into YouTube before, um, there were any real concerns on it.

[18:33] So, we're going to touch in the session two, about things on how to control your YouTube content, which, YouTube is not, it's like, it's a two-edged sword. It's good, because we seek information on how to correct problems that we may have.

[18:45] You learn from it, you know. Um, if you're trying to sew something, or you broke something, you learn how to fix it. Um, you could fix your car. You know, you could figure out how did they, oh, if you have children, you have projects in primary school.

[19:00] And, YouTube is the answer. So, we use YouTube primarily. But, you know that beyond the YouTube for, for figuring out how to build that volcano for that school project.

[19:11] And, the, the, the children, I think the teachers know in the elementary schools that there's no way that the child could really build a volcano by themselves and bring it to school. And, you as a parent, you don't really have time, so we use that.

[19:22] But, at the same time, if they go in, then it's a way how, how to, um, that. So, the other thing we're going to deal with, um, in the digital age is the other social media environment.

[19:35] And, those would be things like, um, Snapchat, Instagram, and, and the like. A lot of it would be in, in the session two, two area. And, so we have a lot of content at your fingertips.

[19:50] As you can see there, it probably may not display well. But, the center icon sort of depicts that there's a ton of content and social media platforms that, that you, that you can use or choose.

[20:04] And, I just want to, to go back to the very beginning, right? So, I was going to give a story about the digital dangers.

[20:15] And, I just, I, what I tell parents when I speak to them is that digital dangers are no different than, than real dangers. Even though you, you could touch, you can't touch and feel digital, but you could touch and feel this.

[20:28] There was a time when my daughter was telling me about a story where they were, went on a school bus trip. They were coming back and the bus had, the bus was stopped in traffic.

[20:41] So, one of the students decided that, um, they were going to get some arie nuts. So, they went, they asked the guy who was selling nuts on, arie nuts on the side of the road for a set of arie nuts.

[20:52] So, they, he was now serving the students in the bus. The student pulled out five dollars, gave it to the arie nuts. And, we know arie nuts is only a dollar. I mean, before VAT, this happened before VAT and all that stuff.

[21:05] So, it was a dollar. So, she was saying, what happened at the end, what happened was, is that the guy with the arie nuts started to say, like, he couldn't find the change. And, so, he knew that the light was going to change.

[21:22] And, so, the bus and the, the teacher or the, the teacher or the driver of the bus, the school bus at the time, wasn't aware of the transaction that was going on at the back of the bus that they, the children were buying nuts from the arie nuts guy.

[21:36] So, the bus pulled off and the arie nuts guy didn't give the students back their change. So, he basically pocketed, if they gave him ten dollars or five dollars, I understood it was five dollars, could have been some more.

[21:48] He didn't give them back. He just pretended as if, and so, the students who didn't get back their change started to cry. And, then the other children on the bus started to laugh at the student who started to cry because he didn't get back the change.

[22:00] But, that just shows that, even within the context of the Bahamas here, children could be taken, taken advantage of. Where we would never think of it. We move that into the digital world and you, and you leave that content open up.

[22:15] Your children would be susceptible to those who will try to take advantage of you. And, that was, that was a styling example of, we can't be there all the time for our children. So, we have to teach them ways, practical things to do to protect themselves and to ensure their safety.

[22:34] Because, I would have never thought that on a school bus trip, I would be expecting a call or the school bus was an accident. But, you know, for the, my daughter tell me the story. And, she's like, Daddy, what should I do?

[22:46] And, so I had to explain the whole story of it. So, that was my Irenna story. And, that's just, just highlights that, as soon as they walk with the presence of you from your house, that safety net is in there that you could, that you could be the umbrella for their protection.

[23:05] And, I was, you know, you just go up there and so, cause my, my parents used to write down time. But, you know, I used to like to read books. And, I used to go down there and I guess, hopefully they have different books.

[23:16] So, you always wanted to go up to the top floor and get the books. But, we knew that content was available and wasn't being discriminated because you could have gone to the library. The problem is now you had to do the, you had to basically go to the library, pull out a physical book and read content.

[23:35] But, I remember reading some books that, they were quite salty at the time. So, library, again, that information that's, that's in there is now readable on your, on your Kindle reader.

[23:50] So, or your, or your Nook or whatever other, you know, if you have an e-book and so forth. So, you want to be able to look at, at content. So, don't be saying that, oh, we just need to have the library with the books.

[24:03] Because, a lot of books are being published, you know. I mean, take for instance, even if you look at today's news. And, we have a president that is sexually thinking that, and they are all publishing books on that now.

[24:16] But, you would notice that in the, in the high schools, they are teaching about American history and so forth. So, I'm sure, I see a couple toddlers inside here. By the time they are in, in school, they probably going to have to be learning about, as my children has, about past U.S. presidents, what's going on here.

[24:33] So, we cannot be ignorant and neglect news events that are also, may have content that, that you may seem objectionable.

[24:45] But, I went to the library, just as part of my research here, and one of the public libraries. And, to my surprise, they had internet here, at the, at the library.

[24:57] And, so, I asked them, if I was a child, at a certain age, and I asked to use the computer in the library, I asked them, I said, is there, are there going to be any restrictions?

[25:08] So, the lady looked at me like, am I from Mars? And, she said, no. I said, are you serious? She said, no, you just signed the paper and you just sit there. They said, do you watch? They said, no.

[25:19] You just go on. They said, is there any content filtering at all? They said, no. So, you could go to one of our national public libraries over here, which are all now internet connected.

[25:31] They have nice computers there, sit down in nice AC. Children says, hey, mom, dad, I'm going to the library. And, you say, oh, yeah, you know, have fun, you know, read the book.

[25:42] But, that also gives them a room to look at content that you may have filtered at home. So, we're going to look at ways how certain things will, you circumvent things to work with, to be bad.

[25:59] So, essentially, sort of a segue into seminar two. We're going to talk about bad content, sexual content, what's good content on the internet, educational content, collaboration, security, and safety.

[26:18] And, where do you go? How do you keep safe and practical advice? And, this is what this seminar is, we'll hope to address your concerns with.

[26:30] Content, digital content, I would classify as, you know, violence. Anything, these would be nudity, profanity, soft porn.

[26:44] Because, there's some serious stuff going on in terms of what you could see nowadays. And, violence, hatred, and suicide. Because, we have a, we shouldn't take suicidal tendencies as a, that's a danger for your child as well.

[27:03] How do, how are they dealing with the stress? Because, now it's no longer a five hour day of bullying. It's a, could be a 24 hours of bullying. Or, they read some content that says this is the path to freedom.

[27:20] Or, this is the path of how to resolve whatever conflicts they are going through in their, in their, in their mind. So, I know, I know of a particular case where, there is a thing called the choke game.

[27:34] Have y'all heard of that? Yeah. Well, the choke game, basically, for those who are unaware, is that, it, it, supposed to be, like, giving yourself a high. You, you choke yourself to the point where, you remove all the oxygen, and your brain, what happens is, there's some, I don't remember the actual thing, but there's some hormones that are generated at the time when you, when your brain lose, when you lose oxygen, and that basically gives you a high.

[28:01] And so, there was a saying going around where you, you choke yourself as long as possible until you just about pass out. And, typically, it used to work where they were doing it in pairs.

[28:12] So, if the, if you didn't have a child visiting, they used to do it where they used to just chat with each other using some type, like, FaceTime or something. And then, they would get out of revival.

[28:23] And, a couple of, they started to do it in a single mode. And, a couple of those haven't been very successful. They didn't, the, the child didn't, didn't recover. So, these are all, um, examples of what some of the digital dangers are.

[28:40] And so, we shouldn't exclude suicidal, um, trends and tendencies that are there. Because, it could go anywhere from playing the choke game to some, you know, where there's, you know, sniffing, um, your, um, postal items to, to try generate the high.

[28:57] Um, because, they don't have access to the, to the pharmaceutical, um, things to actually do that. And, so, um.

[29:11] Is this your session too? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, so, I hope that that was to, hope that gives you an idea in terms of, um, in terms of, of what some digital dangers that there are there.

[29:31] Um, we're gonna hopefully address how to, um, how to manage the content, how to manage your devices.

[29:42] And, we hope to, to, um, to be able to, to, um, share that information. I, what I'd probably do is, at that time, I'd probably include, because of, some of the content here was really to be a segue into that.

[29:55] So, that it could sort of prep you for the things that, that would be discussing there. And, I'll try to fast track things up so that we could stay on track, um, to, to, to, I'm thinking.

[30:06] Does, do you, anybody have any questions so far in what was, has been said so far? Okay. Thank you, um, Mr. Lincoln, um, Hanlon, for your presentation.

[30:27] I really appreciate it. No, no problem. And, I'm a, I'm a type of person, I, I like to be on the forefront. I, I want, I like to know, um, what's happening, who is, um, pushing these things, and why are they pushing these things?

[30:40] And, you know, so I can make my informed decision and educate my children. So, a, a nine-year-old, a four-year-old, and a one-for-one-week-old. Right? And so, um, the internet, basically, we use it.

[30:54] I use it, I'm doing an MBA online. So, you know, it's, it's, um, I use it in a very fruitful way. Again, I teach my children. I tell them, okay, certain things you cannot watch.

[31:06] There are certain subliminal messages. And I tell my son, you know, what to look for, and stuff like that, what to avoid, et cetera. But, um, behind all of this digital promotion, I know there's this company called Singular.

[31:23] And they're really pushing this digital age, and they have their own agendas for what they think that the world should be in the next 40 years. I know YouTube and, YouTube, um, Google owns YouTube.

[31:37] And, um, they have their agenda with their, um, I think, promotion of this AI, um, artificial intelligence kind of thing.

[31:49] And all of that, um, like I said, there, there's a, um, a global agenda with Singular. I think, um, um, um, Bill Gates and this other guy called Ray Wordscrow or something like that.

[32:06] And it's, it's, it's, it's very cryptic when you, when you listen and, and, and hear the, their belief, their, their, their, their, their, actually pushing their world beliefs on us. And if we're not vigilant, you know, we can fall into, to their, to their trap, trappings.

[32:21] And again, I would admonish parents to be more curious and to find out, you know, what, what is happening and who is pushing it. And just, don't just gravitate to it.

[32:33] Because a lot of it is programming. They're programming you. They're programming your children using the internet, using even the television. It's programming, it's programming your mind, you know.

[32:46] And, and we, we need to be more cognizant of what's, what's, what's happening and be, you know, more proactive. Yeah. Uh, thank you so much for your, yeah, there, there, um, I mean, we can do things in the Bahamas to help do, um, get past some of those things that you mentioned.

[33:08] Um, because what you find is in a lot of countries that there are, um, the way how technology really works is that somebody decides that they have an idea and they, and they work on it and they, they build it.

[33:19] And then the country supports it and build it. There's nothing stopping a student, our children from building, uh, a portal or a site that's, that's based on our cultural norms and beliefs.

[33:31] And it becomes popular. For instance, WhatsApp is not very popular in certain other countries or YouTube isn't because there's somebody that's from that particular region who builds an app and the, the entire region runs and goes behind that particular product.

[33:49] So that, that, that is one solution that we could, we could do to, you know, to sort of offset those things. Um, but we all have to be, like you say, um, vigilant and as to, you know, these technology leaders that are, that are, that are putting the technology there.

[34:12] Um, AI, um, she mentioned artificial intelligence. Um, that's the biggest thing. If your child is getting ready for college and so forth, they're gonna be dealing, before we went to, when we went to university and so forth, they would call computer science.

[34:26] Now they're saying it's data science is the thing. And AI is one of, is gonna be a, a major job. If they're gonna be looking for a career in any information technology, um, they're gonna have to be data science professional.

[34:41] And AI is one of the biggest things out there. Um, I'm, uh, my cousin is, he says, when he, he lives in, he's in Japan, he lives in Japan. And he said everything is AI over there.

[34:54] He says, you know, you go to, it's in your sink. You know, you go to the, it's in their TVs. They talk to their TVs. They go to the sink. They put down and they, their water's on. So, when he, when he came down here, he said it was a big difference for him because he said he's, and the putting his hand underneath the, water top and he's like, rest the water.

[35:13] And so, um, we have to, technology isn't bad. It's balancing and making it sure that it, it fits in your family first.

[35:26] And then hopefully it then extends to your neighbor and so forth so that collectively you can use it. Because, um, you know, when BPL goes on and the light goes up, we don't be too happy.

[35:38] We, you know, because we don't have access to our devices. So, I'm not sure how we're going to be able to, to, um, to treat or have technology as a, say, as the bad guy.

[35:51] Because we're enjoying the benefits of technology right now. We're sitting here very cool. Y'all can hear me very well. I don't have to shout. So, there are benefits. We just need to make sure that we, and the reason why we're here is to try to make sure that those benefits are always more focused and, and highlighted than the non-positive side of it.

[36:13] Yeah. Um, I'm very interested in asking about the benefits of it now. Mm-hmm. But what I've seen and read about the future, you know, you can download your consciousness into your, your phone, with the Android.

[36:29] With Android, with the Android app and certain things that, that, that, that I see that, that, that's all there. It's, it's, it, to me, it's a little frightening, you know. Well.

[36:40] And these are like predictions that I'm, I'm seeing maybe the next 50 years, you know. So, yeah. Don't, I, I wouldn't say be fearful because we all can't control the future.

[36:51] And I mean, even, even the Bible speaks about, you know, we don't know, don't plan you tomorrow because we just have to worry about today. But even if you look and you go back several years when certain things were said and we were very, um, technology was introduced that was controversial at the time.

[37:09] We think very little of it and maybe plastic could speak to this whether it's, it's, um, right if you are, um, a believer. Um, I mean, one, you could go back years ago where we would not probably consider having a blood transfusion.

[37:27] You know, is that bad? Um, having a transplant, is that bad? Technology has allowed us to do so, so many things. Um, you know, should we, you know, get somebody else's eye to make ours improve or should we extract a part to make, improve and, and to heal us in another area?

[37:46] We could have, this discussion could go on in terms of the back and forth on it. And, um, certainly there's some things that can be addressed from a biblical standpoint and, and, and the pastor would probably be more the person to speak towards those things.

[38:02] But for the most part for the session and maybe some of the answers could be answered, some of your questions already could be answered in, in, in the, um, in the, um, in the second session.

[38:14] Yes, Yes, Yes Yes Yes