THE FUNCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT


                       "I think the computer was a worthy invention" a student remarked. in the Abraham Lincoln type school house. which i had built in wood on top of the first floor adobe dwelling. The place is Latin America. The highland city of Guatemala and the class is English.
                       "I suppose just like the telephone.the automobile and the airplane."I conceded. My object was to provoke a conversation so i allowed them to chose their subject.
                       "Of course there are bad things about it too. like when adolescents abuse it, in watching pornography.
                        "There's that of course,"I agreed
                        "But in don't think i could function without a computer." another student, who worked in real estate, volunteered.
                        "It's the same thing with me," a lawyer, who was a public defender, said. I can do in seconds what i once had to write down in a huge ledger, dating back to the nineteenth century..."
                         'So we make progress, the real estate student agreed, as a jazz beat told him to answer his cell phone. "Excuse me teacher," he said and retreated to the back porch.
                     There the view was an ancient backdrop of timeless mountains which circumscribed the town, where everyone lived. There was always war here. The k'iche nation displaced the Mam nation by means of spears. The Spanish the displaced the K'iche by means of gunpowder. Then many years later, there was a civil war that displaced each other with the help of modern weapons. Could it have been because they lacked a functional environment, I considered that the present day armaments were the most sophisticated in recorded history. We were now able to devastate the planet in a twenty minute war. Was this functional?
                     Now, of course, all was quiet here and those who did not know history felt safe. All was very quiet until the next cell phone, with a Latin beat, went off and the lawyer excused himself to join the real estate man on the back porch. I was left with a couple of NGO professionals, based in the States, so they had to learn English or perish. One of them had a Blackberry and another an I pod. These things were indispensable for their existence in their functional environment.
                        "All my colleagues in Boston act like they're all movie stars. They don't just

 talk but say...wow..look at me!"
                        "Yes, that's all part of the internet, where everyone is famous," I agreed before she replied to a technological summons.
                     When they finally returned, one by one, each one said they had to cut the class short, for different reasons. I was left in my one room school house while they went off to meet the maelstrom of the modern age. I left the lesson on the white board and waited for the next class in this functional environment.