The other day I jotted some notes down on a piece of paper. A little while later when I went to read back what I had written down, I scratched my head in bewilderment and felt a tension headache starting to form at the back of my cranium. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the hieroglyphic-like, chicken scratch that was my handwriting.
This wasn’t the first time I had found myself in this predicament. It appears my penmanship is regressing and slowly I’m becoming semi-literate. I can read but not write – at least on paper. Years of computer use have reduced my pen and paper skills to prehistoric era cave drawings.
It wasn’t always this way. I used to have great penmanship. Growing up, reading and writing always compensated for my dismal performance in math and science. English is my first and only language……..well that and gibberish!
We can all argue that computers and technology have all made our lives easier and more convenient. But have they actually made our lives better? Is the quality of one’s life in 2010 better than in 1950?
Now that computers are commonplace in elementary schools and even kindergarten, isn’t it just a matter of time before actually putting pen to paper becomes a lost art – kind of like operating an Eight-Track stereo?
Well, technology has certainly shrunk the world. Everywhere seems just a bit closer. Now you can use Skype to talk to relatives and friends dispersed across the globe for free – and you can actually see them too. I remember this was only available in science-fiction movies when I was a kid. And now it’s reality! However has it actually strengthened those long-distance relationships or has it made you take them for granted? When I was a kid, a call from my grandparents in England was a special treat. Long distance rates were legalized extortion and therefore chats with loved ones only occurred on special occasions. However I really looked forward to those calls and cherished them. There was so much catching up to do. I would get carried away until one of my parents would try frantically to get my attention and point to their watch to let me know the phone bill was quickly spiraling out of control.
Even letters seemed special. Nobody it seems sends letters anymore. Letters from loved ones also seemed special back then. Because writing a letter was often time-consuming, people would usually just send them on special occasions or only a few times throughout the year. I remembered my excitement at seeing my name on an envelope with a foreign stamp on it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I received a letter. Now with email you don’t need to send a letter. Hell, you don’t even need to pick up the phone and call somebody or speak to them face to face for that matter. You can simply type a few choice words, press a button and voila……you have communicated!
Like it or not, the world is slowly becoming a haven for hermits! You don’t need to interact with other people because you can lock yourself in your room and accomplish everything you need to do. If you want food you can order online. If you want movies you can also order online or through your television. If you want to shop for books, open your computer. If you want to shop for underwear, open your computer. If you want to buy a car, open your computer. Damn, if you want Viagra open your blasted computer and shop for it online! No need to actually venture outside of your house and have some kind of human interaction.
I must admit that I do love electronics. I crave an iPad and couldn’t live without my iPod. No longer do I have to get up and actually put a new CD in my CD player if I want to listen to something different. Even the 10 CD changers didn’t suffice as I often only wanted to listen to a couple of tracks on each CD. So I couldn’t escape having to get up, eject the disc and insert a new one. Now my entire music collection is on a tiny device that fits in my back pocket. Amazing! However since I don’t really need to move off of my couch for anything as it’s all at my fingertips; my weight is multiplying by the second. I think I’ve put on five pounds just since I started typing this blog.
I also love my computer. I love the fact that I can take my laptop anywhere in the world with wireless internet and can be instantly connected to everything I need. I can pay my bills, watch a movie, chat to Tom, Dick and Harry, and run a global corporation. What I don’t really like is the fact I’ve now given criminals another way into my home to steal everything that I own, including my identity!
I’ve been guilty of owning a satellite dish to receive numerous television and movie channels. I’m a movie buff and so I love watching all of the latest releases. However I’ve realized that the television is actually divisive in my house. It doesn’t encourage the family to be together but everyone is off in a different room to watch whatever show they are interested in. Once a week we have ‘Family Movie Night’ in which we’ll all sit down to watch a family movie and ‘nyam’ nuff popcorn while doing so. Other than that the TV keeps us segregated in different parts of the house. Even the kids are in different rooms as my son and youngest daughter will want to watch one show, while my eldest daughter usually wants to watch something different. What the hell did people do before television? Did families actually talk to each other? Did they ever enjoy simply being around each other and interacting with one another?
I’m an avid book reader. I go through too many books each year as evidenced by the stacks of books in my house. I also love shopping for books. As dorky and nerdy as it may sound, the bookstore is one of my favourite places. Kind of pathetic really, but I take solace in going through the different sections and discovering new authors I haven’t heard of before. Then maybe I’ll grab a coffee, put my headphones on, and start to lose myself in a great novel. I wonder, will bookstores eventually become a thing of the past? Many people shop online at Amazon or Barnes and Nobel. Now e-books are quickly changing the way the entire publishing industry works. With the improvement of many e-book readers and the launch of the iPad, the appeal of getting books in electronic format is growing. E-books only account for 5% of the market now but I’m willing to bet that will jump to double digits in no time. Then it’s only a matter of time before traditional books go the way of the Dodo – extinct and lost forever!
I guess my love hate relationship with technology will continue. I’ll look back with a great degree of sentimentality to the way things used to be – a world that is much different from the one my children are growing up in. I’ll most likely buy my iPad and love it to death! When I say hi to some random stranger on the street and they look like they’re about to have a heart attack I’ll put it down to their shock at another human being actually uttering live words to them. I’ll do arm curls with the remote control to get some sort of exercise and will resist the urge to order Viagra online when things start to break down – not for a long time yet!!!!
Sane Ramblings in an Insane World 
Did you see the film Wall-E? It is about the very same thing you are speaking of in this blog post. You should watch it…
Jason, another angle in which to observe when discussing the usefulness of technolgy. I wrote this a year ago.
Style Obsolescence
It is said that if there is one thing that remains constant in this world it is that things change – a truism that not only applies to life, it acutely applies to the technology world. We have come to associate technology with change as well as advancement. The mere nature of technology is change; the pursuit of better and faster. Certain assumptions are now made about accuracy and efficiency when viewing the world in terms of technological relevance. There also seems to be no suspension of belief when it comes to the possibilities of technology. The changes that occur in technology are difficult to always track yet we have come to expect that these changes will eventually touch our lives. To these ends, what is cutting edge today is quickly dismissed as obsolete tomorrow.
This obsolescence is an intrinsic part of technology and has made its’ commercialization possible. Consider that the floppy disk has been replaced with the Zip drive, the CD Rom, from that to the DVD, the USB key and the external hard drive as a way of storage. The portability and ease of use of an USB key is obvious but have floppy disks been rendered useless as a result? It would be if you were trying to use a floppy diskette in today’s computer systems because floppy disk drives have pretty much been phased out. You could use that floppy diskette in an older computer but you would likely be dissatisfied with its’ relative small storage capacity. You could continue to use the older technology but at some point due to incompatibility issues, lack of interoperability, the limited life span of the product and the inability to access replacement parts you would likely make the switch to the new thing. The term that is given to this example is Technical Obsolescence and is typically marked by advancements in technology.
Another form of obsolescence which is a little harder to explain is what is called Style Obsolescence. Marketing campaigns which aim to highlight what is the newest, slickest and most streamlined of consumer products act as the gatekeeper’s of cool. Electronic gadgetries have been mass produced to a point where they are priced within the reach of most consumers. So in the midst of a technological market place the fear is that your product is no longer in vogue even though the device still performs the task it was originally meant to. Style obsolescence is nothing new; the fashion industry has operated within this framework since the beginning of time. Understanding why someone would discard a perfectly good pair of jeans because the stitching isn’t what this season’s fashion disciples are wearing would require that you have a university degree in human psychology. This sort of consumerism is largely perpetuated because individuals have the need to distinguish themselves socially through class identification and in part to a necessity to cloth oneself. Style obsolescence in technology is just as puzzling and the best example is the spending habits of people who own cellular phones. These phones are no longer a device in which people use to communicate they have become something entirely different. Cell phones not only make phone calls; they snap pictures, take video, text and upload Facebook commentary. Do we really need to do all these things with a cellular phone? Consumers seem to have registered their vote at the cash register and the consensus is a resounding yes.
I have heard a salesperson describe a particular cell phone in the store as being “sick”, which from what I gather means that it is not actually sick, it is “sick” in a good way. And these new phones all have their own special names like the “Pearl” or the “Razor” which makes them seem more “sick” to the consumer. What is interesting is just how short lived the cool quotient is on these phones. By the time you have passed six months of your locked-in three year contract with your service provider a new crop of cell phones have come into the market and the cell phone that you currently have no longer elicits the same sort of interest from people at that wine and cheese party you attended last weekend. The harsh reality is that your phone has now become obsolete and the reason your phone does not have a track ball in the middle and it doesn’t have a fruity sounding name. It sounds like style obsolescence has made you its next casualty.
To place things into perspective, we must consider that it is the consumer that has helped to push technology as far as it has. If no one were buying these products there would not exist the necessity for the technology to advance any further – technology and consumerism have a symbiotic relationship. More and more both are being seen as symbols of modern day excesses. What can we make of this relationship? Judge it as you may, but it would appear that the future of technology and the appetites of consumers’ are limitless. Where we go from here is anyone’s guess.
I was nodding my head and chuckling to myself during most of this blog post. I’ve shared many of the same thoughts. Today, I told my preschooler that I didn’t have the internet when I was her age. There wasn’t even a computer in our home when I was a kid. They didn’t exist (PCs, I mean). I could see in her eyes how alien that was for her. She’s been surrounded by computers since day one and astounds her grandmother with her seemingly innate prowess with the mouse. The kid is fearless on the computer. I remember how I resisted adopting the mouse when it came on the market. Ha! My daughter took to the iPad like the proverbial fish to water. When they say that screen is intuitive, it’s no joke.
Some of my fondest memories growing up are of my whole family watching “The Carol Burnett Show” or “The Waltons” together on ONE TV set. No VCR. Pee break during the commercial lest you missed Harvey Corman’s slapstick or the Hallmark moment on Waltons’ Mountain. Ah, the good old days. Before TV, families gathered around the radio and listened to serials. I remember my father recounting some of them to us when we were kids. (It thrilled us because it was alien to our reality.)
Media is so fragmented now. Everything is specialized and there seems to be too much of everything. What form of entertainment can bring a family together today?
And if books ever become obsolete, I will cry. For real. The whole tactile experience of holding a book in my hands, seeing the dark font on the crisp paper, being the first to open it…ack!
I’ll have to rent that Wall-E movie – no clue it touched on this topic. Thanks for the tip, Mad Bull. You bring up good points, Dwane. Consumers drive technology advancements but a lot of “less than essential” technology seems to be created before the need for it. Creative people will create, regardless.