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June 10, 2011 - 8:04 am
my rant on technology
So I couldn't fall asleep last night. We watched the social network and that just got me thinking about this blog that I started close to 9 years ago.
9 years!
In a way I wish I still had those marble notebooks that I had originally started my journal with. There were 3 of them. I had started doing this in HS because we had to for one of our classes. What one, I don't remember- I think it was Ms Hennessy's, but if it was junior year or senior year I don't remember. All I know is that I liked it and I kept doing it. I wrote about all my relationships, friends, family, my college experience, what I did that day. But when I moved in with Jay, I threw them out. I didn't see a point in keeping a history of my old relationships because I knew that this was going to be the most important one I'd have, but everything else that was in there got thrown out too.
I started this one when I was finally done with Bill. When I decided that there was no going back, it wasn't going to work and I needed to move on with my life. Deciding that and actually being able to do that are two totally different things, and it took me a long time, but I did it. I can't really remember why I switched to online. I think it had something to do with beth. I know she had a blog on diaryland first. I actually like looking back through this blog every once in a while and seeing what I wrote- how I felt when Jay first said I love you, reading about how we've grown as individuals, as well as a family.
Being reminded of the little things that seemed so important that day that I just had forgotten.
Then I just started thinking about what if one day, technology just no longer existed. What would happen? I know I could live without it. Could you? Email was so great 15 years ago. A way to stay in touch with faraway freinds. Now, who uses email as a form of correspondence? It's for sending junk coupons, subscriptions, and work. Occasionally, I'll send one here and there to someone, but very rarely. It's like as there is more and more technology becomes available, the messages get shorter and shorter. First- email. Then text messages, then Myspace and Facebook, where it's just a public message on a wall that anyone can read, now twitter, where it's what 100 characters or something like that? "eating a sandwich". Is that what we want to tell our friends and family? Not something meaningful or important about who we are or how we feel, but just a record of what we did at that day and time? Is that what relationships have boiled down to? Meaningless crap? This is what technology does? Makes it "easier" to communicate, but turns the actual context of communication to worthless garbage? Give me a hand-written letter any day. I still enjoy writing them. I was never a fan of the phone, but I'll enjoy a long conversation with a distant friend once in a while.
I feel bad for the youth of today. They don't know what it was like to NOT have the internet, a cell phone, email. We've see what it's like to have nothing, and then be handed this new technology- cutting edge 28k modems that let you dial up and chat to other people in the world. Do chat rooms even exist anymore? I remember the first computer we had. It had the green monitor and a dot-matrix printer. It was cool because you could print out these long banners that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY. You could type up your homework on them so the teacher could read it better and you could make the font bigger to meet the page requirements. I remember not having a cell phone, but a beeper. That's what I had in high school and the first 2 years of college. A beeper! So if someone wanted to talk to you, they'd let you know and you'd have to call them back to find out what they wanted. I remember having a cell phone my last year of college. It stayed in the car because the battery only lasted for maybe a 15 minute conversation. It was just in case the car broke down and you needed to call AAA. It was not for communicating. I was one of the underprivledged. I didn't have my own phone in my room. We had one phone line (+1 for the computer/fax) in our house. I couldn't get phone calls after 10 PM- it was considered rude. If it was dinner time, we didn't answer the phone. No one was distracted by checking email, texting, browsing the web. You had to sit and have a conversation or sit in silence.
I got my first phone when I was working at Staples. It was an Ericsson T28W. It was a cute blue. It had voicemail, text messaging, tetris and solitare. I want to say it was November-ish 2000. I think it maybe had a 60 minute talk time and my plan had 100 text messages a month.
Now, Nextel was cool. I got that the following year when they had an employee plan with Staples. Had a walkee-talkee. All my coworkers had them so we'd use that around the store. I think the phone even had internet capability, but what companies were designing websites to be phone browser compatible? Not too many! And I don't even remember using text messages much on that one either. It wasn't until 08 when I got verizon that text messaging became really popular with me. And now I read this week that it's in danger of becoming extinct! All these smartphones have their own form of messaging now, BBM, Android, Google Talk.. they don't use the SMS Text messaging service. Phone companies are starting to lose money!
Last month- 360 texts. My husband, almost 1000. Kids today... who knows! What's the point of this rant? Honestly, I'm not sure. I guess I'm just saddened by the way that the world has changed and how humans go out of their way to not have human interaction anymore, and how the younger generations think that this is the norm because they don't know what it was like to live before all of this existed. Watching the social network or any other movie that takes place in a college setting, and seeing how that experience is completely different from what I had, and with only a few years time, it just seems so foreign to me.
It makes me wonder when Cadence starts school in a couple of years, what is her experience going to be like? Is she going to need a laptop in 1st grade to do all her homework on? Is she going to miss out on what it's like to be a kid and go outside and play with other kids?
previous - next
archery instructor aka wonderwoman - September 25, 2017
missing jay! - September 15, 2017
trying to remember, and wishing I could forget - September 07, 2017
completely overwhelmed - September 05, 2017
16 girl scouts - August 25, 2017
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