I'm surrounded by technology and I'll bet you are too. In an arc around me are a wireless printer, a desktop computer, a flat screen monitor, a speaker system, a wireless mouse and keyboard, a high performance modem, a cordless phone, a high output wireless router, a tablet and a smart phone. Damn, but I think they're closing in on me. The paper shredder behind me isn't part of their high-tech gang but it's got blades so I keep one eye on it anyway.
In the garage, my motorcycle's engine is computerized. The brakes too. My car speaks to me although it mostly talks back. One day quite by accident I selected "factory setting reset" and wound up being hectored by the reincarnation of Ilse, She Wolf of the SS. Bitch.
I've got technology up the yin yang and, truth is, I use it and it has become part of my daily life and I don't know how well I could function without it. Technology is my window to the world. It is where I find and sift through information and thoughts. It is how I relay information and convey my thoughts to others. It is how I connect with acquaintances, good people as far as I can tell, with whom I've never shaken hands or shared a drink much less a confidence. It is digital semaphore.
Life, for me at least, has become either high-tech or no-tech. I do try to keep them separate. Ear buds and i-Pods don't add to the joy of fishing, they pollute it. I don't want to be consulted by a smart phone while I walk the beach or meander through a forest. My kids are now saying what I told my father fifteen years ago, always carry your cell phone, just in case of emergencies. It's a losing battle.
My children find nothing alarming in living a digital life. They were born into it. It is all they've ever known. To them, I am an artifact of an earlier world they can't really comprehend. They are strangers to solitude, incapable of seeing the beauty in it. Perhaps that is why they're so indifferent to the surrender of their privacy. They are connected people and the digital tap is always open at least a trickle. They cannot hear the drip, drip, drip.
We are no longer as physical a people as we were throughout the span of our civilization. The advent of cheap, fossil fuel energy harnessed to technological advance has transformed our physicality. We have been freed of the heavy lifting, perhaps a double-edged sword. It seems we are losing our ability to distinguish labour from tedium. Manual labour is to be avoided, shunned, not because it is hard but because it is boring and tedious. Surely there's an app for that. Text me when you're leaving the gym.
The most alien part of living materializes when we embark on the third trimester of life. It is, as you always expected before joining the club, a curious time. For it is only as you migrate to the higher branches of the tree that you begin to see the landscape more clearly. That can, for the fortunate, give pause to reflect and reconsider. Some, many perhaps, don't look at all, afraid of looking down for fear of vertigo. They close their eyes and cling to the past with a fear fueled, bitter resentment.
Some things really don't change. Mark Twain wrote that many men die at 27 but we don't get around to burying them until they're 72. Since then, of course, we've extended longevity by a good 20-years so today you might say that many men die at 29 but aren't buried until 92. See, there is life after death, sort of.
I am at that point in this monologue where there are too many directions in which to proceed and far too little time or energy to choose. Besides I think my trusty - old - computer is going terminal and I must explore the state of the art before it goes into arrest. Hmm, I wonder how I'd live without it?
8 comments:
I enjoyed your ponderings here, Mound. I, too, have often wondered about the role technology plays in our lives, and I think the reason I am relatively savvy when it comes to computers and the Internet is the fact that I worked with a young teacher who was the 'go-to guy' whenever we had trouble running the program for report cards, etc. He taught me a great deal.
Although I worry that technology has resulting in the commodification of life in some ways, I feel richer with it because I developed my critical thinking skills during a time of low/no tech, so I think I have some perspective on how to use things like the Internet more wisely than some (after, that is, I've watched cute cat videos on You Tube) ;)
We spend a lot of the summer at a lake just north of home. Last year we bought kayaks, and we enjoy paddling around for hours. There are loons and eagles, beavers and muskrats resident on the lake. There are shallow marshy areas where the motorboats and the waterskiers cannot go, so these corners of th lake are quiet, and you can hear the crickets and frogs and birds singing.
Last weekend a young couple took the resort's kayaks, asking us how long to paddle around the point to a certain cabin. As they floated off, the boy said, "I feel like there should be a mechanically easier way to do this." It just made me sad.
I hope you had a peaceful long weekend.
My daughter, 16, is actually somewhat ambivalent about technology. Oh, she knows her way around a smartphone (although until a few days ago she didn't own one) and she uses the internet. But she hates Twitter, worries about her use of Facebook, doesn't spend all that much time e-communicating. She doesn't want a laptop or a tablet. OK, she's on the phone with her boyfriend for hours--but the landline phone, so she won't use up minutes. And teenage girls on the phone with their boyfriends for hours has been happening for what, four generations or so now?
And she's as fond of nature as the next person, and seems no less connected to it than people decades ago. Maybe more than people from the glory days of car culture; we forget just how blase people were about sailing through the great outdoors paying no attention to it except as a litter receptacle, how acceptable it was to just toss your crap out the car window because the environment was just background.
The main thing that seems different about her and some of her friends relative to my generation is, she's more pessimistic about the world she's being left with. In my teenagehood, I thought the adults were going to blow the world up with nuclear war. But barring that it seemed like things were mostly OK. I never thought Reagan/Thatcherism would keep going for bloody decades! She's fairly sure that previous generations have fucked her over--that there are going to be few decent jobs and a dying planet not because of some singular catastrophe, but because the system is inexorably doing that. I find it hard to argue.
I share your guarded optimism, Lorne, yet remain just a tad ill at ease over the prospect of being totally seduced by technology. It seems increasingly opaque.
That sounds like an idyllic way to spend the summer, Karen. It's unfortunate you have to evade powerboats and water skiers but at least you've eked out spots of genuine tranquility.
You're a lucky guy, PLG. Your daughter seems well grounded. I don't know that she's pessimistic as much as realistic.
I can still vividly recall the Cuban missile crisis and getting together with my buddies, a gang of 12-year olds, to debate whether we were better off to try to shelter in our basements or stand out in the front lawn, face Detroit, and get vaporized.
Your daughter is justified in blaming previous generations for bequeathing her a shitty deal. We were ignorant for a good long time but we've had no excuse for what we've done over the past ten or fifteen years.
.. blow up your TV .. throw away your paper
.. go to the country .. build you a home
.. plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches ...
.. try an' find Jesus on your own ..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N4HPj85vjw
http://www.metrolyrics.com/spanish-pipedream-lyrics-john-prine.html
Lovely questions & musings .. MOS
The Mark Twain quote .. priceless
You're in brilliant form.. exceptional work
Quite stunning perspectives & analysis
on critical events and many topics, science and culture
Have you or Damien Gillis ever discussed collaborating directly ? I often wonder about cross pollination such as this.. ie seeing a leading indy journalist exemplar working directly with an exemplar such as David W. Schindler
Just a thought ..
All that lovely communications technology allows us (artists, scientists, generalists etc) to conquer distance.. Marshall McLuhan saw this coming.. Derrick de Kerkhoeve too .. cultural outposts manned by generalists that can harness techology.. hmmmnn ..
Very kind words of encouragement, Sal, thanks. Yes, Twain's observation is priceless - and so true.
I told my youngest son today to heed the teaching of the Buddha. "Eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired.". We both laughed. He said it sounded like a good idea.
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