Mediaeval mind games?

Here endeth the Merchant's tale and beginneth the prologue of the Wife of Bath

Experience, though no authority

Were in this world, is right enough for me

To speak of woe that is in marriage;

But, Lords, since I was twelve winters of age

Thanks be to God that is eternally alive,

Husbands at the church door have I had five

If I so often might have wedded been,

And all were worthy men in their degree.

But once I was told not long ago

That Jesus went never but once

To a wedding in Cana, in Galilee,

By that example he was teaching me

That I should be wed only once.

And listen what a sharp word, too, was said

Beside a well by Jesus, God and man,

In a reproof of the Samaritan:

'Now you have had five husbands,' Jesus said,

'But he who has you now, I say instead,

Is not your husband.' That he said, no doubt,

But what he meant I haven't figured out;

For I must ask, why is it the fifth man

Wasn't husband to the Samaritan?

---

I see a lot of children with their noses in tablets, laptops or smart phones. Are they learning to be anti-social? I mean, how friendly are their Facebook "friends"?

I read a lot these days about parents worried that on-line time is taking over their children - they have dozens, or even hundreds, of "friends" on social media but find it difficult to talk to others face-to-face; they do not move for long periods and are putting on weight - they become reclusive prompting fears about cyber-bullying or even grooming. Yet the biggest growth market today is the Internet, with cloud apps, smart-phone connectivity, social media and "life-sharing on line" through media like Instagram and SnapChat.

Well just a little something to redress the balance - it isn't all doom and gloom. Apparently a game called Minecraft (OK, I know you know it, but we don't all have kids of that age) can bring autistic children out of their shell. I know a lot is made of autism now, and I do agree to some extent with people who say it isn't on the increase, just a lot of parents are getting on the bandwagon cause they find it difficult to cope with their little treasure who happens to be shy/nerdy/gauche or just plain antisocial.

But autism is real and in extreme cases very debilitating. Minecraft has been shown to help even the worst affected autistic children. OK there is still a need for parents to monitor their offspring's on-line lives, but that is just coping with life: never have parents been able to ignore developments in society. I dare say there were many who performed regular hand-wringing when Johann Gutenberg's press started to alter reading habits (at a time when few could read, or could appreciate the benefits of reading). I read that in England (and most of Europe) around 1300-1400, about 6% of the population was literate - most of these did it for a living. By 1500, just after the development of the printing press this doubled, and this before books printed by the new system became widely available!

William Claxton had introduced printing in England (in what was then English) in about 1475. Claxton had seen books printed while in the Netherlands, and during a political upheaval in England moved to Köln (Cologne) where he helped publish an encyclopaedia in Latin (the international lingua franca). He promptly hired experienced workers, brought them to London and set up the first press to print in the vernacular. The result was that people no longer became literate solely for a job or as a professional qualification, they wanted to read or they wanted to communicate. Hence the burgeoning of literacy. An excerpt is reproduced above from his first book (Prologue to the Wife of Bath, a chapter in Canterbury Tales by Chaucer with a rough translation to modern English)

Did society collapse when reading became so popular? Never before had this "time wasting" been seen - people started reading novels and poetry! People even started writing about news! Somehow,though, society survived the upheaval, and I'm sure social media will not spell doom for us either. In the meantime check out sites like www.autcraft.com/ especially if you have children or know anyone who might suffer from autism