Am I now digitally literate?

I like pomegranates … but I rarely buy them. I see them on the counter in the shop, am tempted for a moment, but then remember the zen-like patience needed to extract the delicious little jewels at the rate of a few morsels per minute. Either that or take out chunks at at a time and endure the additional flavour of bitter pith. But what has all this to do with ICT? Well surely there has to be a better way of deseeding a pomegranate … we’ve sky-craned a vehicle onto the surface of a planet tens of millions of miles away for goodness sake! Now I didn’t expect there to be a technical solution necessarily, but I did hope that Google might know if it could be done.

In less than a minute I had the answer (on an iPod Touch), had watched a video and in no more than three more minutes was drooling over a perfectly juicy spoonful of pomegranate seeds … and then several more.

What a wonderful little learning episode in which a problem was posed, solution sought, alternative possibilities skimmed, single solution chosen, then executed. A known unknown to a known in under five minutes. It may only be a small change, but my life is now enriched and more enjoyable thanks to Google, YouTube, the producer of the video and the iPod Touch. Just think if you could do that every day … several times!

Pomegranate is back on the menu!