In the last, oh, I don’t know, maybe 10-20 years, there have
been huge advancements in information technology...obviously. We have smart
phones and tablets and Google and Wikipedia and texting and Bluetooth and
wireless everything and Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and Netflix and i-this
and i-that and i-am-missing-a-bunch,-i-know. We have screens and chargers and
beeps and bleeps and buttons and touch screens and i-nformation and i-nstant
communication.
OK—it’s really amazing. I really, honestly, often take a
second or two to let it sink in that I really just emailed back-and-forth with someone across the
world, that I have a friend on Facebook with the same last name as me in
Holland who is not family and I’ve never met but we wish each other a “Happy
Birthday” on our birthdays, that if I am watching a movie and recognize an
actor but want to know what other movies he’s been in, I can IMDB that person
and find out, that if I am listening to a song I love but don’t know who the
artist is, I can “shazam” that song and find out, that if I am getting ideas
for decorating a room, I can Google search something and find out things...phew—this sentence is tired, so it will end now!
Yes, life today is full of conveniences, and the technologies that have become so commonplace allow for
information and communication to be transferred and exchanged quickly, and allow
for crisp images in movies and tons of things to experience online, and answers
to millions of questions to appear at your fingertips.
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| The life of this picture of Emmett rockin' out: It was taken by Joel's phone, emailed to me, and then saved to my computer and posted to my blog, which now makes it accesible to anyone with an Internet connection. Obviously...but since I was born in the '80s, this is still really cool. |
That, of course, is only one side of the two-sided coin (a
coin that lights up and knows your name and has an automated flipping feature).
What’s on the other side?
Well, I have to confess that sometimes I feel a little bit
of pressure to keep up with technology. I have had the same cell phone for
almost two years, and it’s not a smart phone. Sometimes I ask myself, “Should I
have a smart phone?” I can’t even transfer pictures I take from my phone to my
computer! I only have room for 50 pictures on my phone! My message inbox and
outbox get full so fast that I have to delete all my text messages every month
or so! How prehistoric is that!
I don’t have an e-reader, and I’m thinking, is it time that
I switched to one instead of reading regular books? Or do I love regular books
enough to just keep burying my nose in them and turning those analogous paper pages?
Sometimes I wonder where the line is between holding on to “old
technology” because it “works just fine and I like it and there’s nothing wrong
with it” and keeping up with technology so you don’t ever become that person
who would be lost trying to operate the latest computer, phone or tablet.
Sometimes I also wonder at how dependent we have become on
the type of information and communications “everyday” technology that is
standard for most people. This year, Joel and I upgraded our TV and found
ourselves dealing with (for the first time, yes, I know, we were kind of “late”
with some of this) wireless routers and Netflix and Cinema Now (which, in my
opinion, should be called Cinema Some Time) and home networks to which you can
connect several devices. This was all amazing at first, but a couple of times,
things have gone wrong. Lighting fried our router a couple months ago and we
had to set everything up again, which was a nightmare. When we were without
internet on our one computer, and couldn’t watch movies through our TV unless it
was Cogeco On Demand (not Netflix), and couldn’t watch Youtube videos on our TV
or look at photos from our computer on our TV, I felt really lost and
frustrated...and subsequently felt kind of “gross” for feeling that way. (Ugh;
there is so much going on in the world, that, all right, I felt downright
terrible for getting annoyed with all of these technological inconveniences—a First
World problem for sure.) What was originally really wonderful is now taken for granted.
I don’t know if you ever feel this way, but it’s kind of
like a love-hate relationship with some forms of technology...at least with the
ones I’ve mentioned above. As much as new things are amazing and revolutionary
and make things easier and faster, they can be royal pains in the neck as well.
At this point, given the amount of frustration I have had over this year with
different things concerning computers, phones, connections, electronic this and
digital that, I guess I feel a little hesitant to be wholeheartedly “for” all
of this advancement—and then at the same time, I feel a little stressed about
feeling that way because I don’t want to be behind the advancement and not
understand how the newest things work and what they can do.
I wonder, then, with the speed of advancements and
conveniences, where we will be in another 10-20 years. Are my kids going to
want iPods and cell phones, or are they going to want something else because
there will be something else a million times more functional than that? Will
they say, “Oh my goodness, Mom, iPods are sooooo ancient!”
At what point do these conveniences become inconvenient? At
what point does the speed of communication actually start slowing us down with
how much of it we do? At what point does the sheer volume of information
actually start weighing us down and incapacitating us under it?
P.S. I almost considered not posting this because I am
thinking that at least one reader might be thinking, “OK, Christina, you said
all that in a blog post that you typed up on your computer and posted a link to
on Facebook...a little hypocritical, maybe?”
I hope not. I am going to take my chances because I think this
proves my point. I might as well use these technological amenities to be able
to gripe about their inconveniences and stresses, right? Isn’t that putting
them to good use? Isn't that what they're there for?
