On a whim, I recently purchased a copy of the movie Woodstock. While my kids are away at camp, I occasionally have some spare time in the evenings, so I decided to add to my current spate of nostalgia with the whole three-and-a-half hour "director's cut" of this classic. My wife and I (we didn't know each other at the time) both had tickets to the festival, but neither of us ever got there, for different reasons. Without going into a boring diatribe on all the merits of the film and the legacy of my generation that it depicts, let's just say that watching it was a positive and enjoyable experience.

I now observe, with very warm and tender feelings, many kids in their early teens going around dressed in blue-denim bell-bottoms, adorned with peace signs, long hair, and many other trappings from the sixties. I love it. These post-Generation-X teens are so obviously the progeny of the boomer generation that it's almost silly. While the older ones, just out of college, are rushing towards Wall Street or Bellevue, Washington, these younger ones will hopefully soften the edge of our technophillic, anonymous, faceless, computerized world.

Strange thoughts coming from someone whose career depends on those cold ones and zeros? Not at all. If my yin is rooted in computers and software, then surely my yang remains barefoot in the grass, reading Dickens, listening to CSN&Y, and keeping in mind that these glowing boxes are just tools. That perspective - and that balance - are critical to me, and help me accept the life I've chosen. Among this young generation, computers are so commonplace that they've lost the novelty that made them pervade so much of our culture recently. Good! Because once they're adopted as the useful tools they are, once they lose their status as the be-all-end-all of every turn of our daily lives, we'll hopefully watch more sensitive and insightful aspects of humanity return. We need this to happen.

My younger daughter was recently berated by a schoolmate who chided her for being "so into peace" and for being the "tie-dye queen". He thought it would be a dig calling her the "daughter of hippies". Her response was perfect, as far as this proud father is concerned: What's wrong with being into peace? Or love?. Indeed. Meanwhile, she wants a computer of her own (you remember the shoemaker's unshod children, don't you?). Since she currently uses mine when necessary, I asked her why she needed one. (I had visions of Doom and Earthquake luring her into the culture of futuristic battle and techno-slaughter.) "It would make it easier for me to write and edit and illustrate poetry and stories", she explained. Sigh....

Thanks for stopping by. I update this column once or twice each month to discuss various issues ranging from software development to the meaning of life. Please check back soon.