Technology

Everyone today takes technology for granted.
It’s easy to do because we have been told that it is to make our lives easier.
But does it really?
I remember a time when having 2 television sets in your house was a Big deal.
You were lucky if it was a color TV and that you had 3 channels to watch. Now we have these Flat screen TV’s light enough to hand on a wall, surround sound and hundreds of channels to watch… which still is only showing the same shows over and over again.
I can sit down in the evening and watch the same show 5 times on different stations at different times… how does this make my life any easier?
With more technology the world has become smaller.
Instead of curling up with a good book and using my imagination, I plunk myself down in front of the set and watch the latest episode of reality T.V. Or I spend hours on the Internet chatting with my friends, twittering what I am doing and checking out the latest video on Youtube. I email now and get upset when I don’t get a reply back in an hour.
When before you took the time to find nice writing paper to make writing a letter a special time. Now we text a few letters to a person using shorthand to say R U OK? I M gr8. (Translation, for those of you who are older: are you okay? I am great)


I have a cell phone, which allows anyone to reach me everywhere I go. Which means I am now “on call” for work or help 24 hours a day.
More and more I see people with less imagination because they have never been taught to use it. Look at the film industry as an example. How many movies are remakes in the last 3 years alone? Are there no more original plots to be imagined? Have we lost that ability?

With technology, we have become lazy. Cartoons for children where on Saturday mornings and then you went outside to play for the rest of the day. Our backyard was always filled with kids from the neighbourhood. We would play tag, hide and go seek. Road hockey, ride bicycles everywhere and run races. We would event games, create mud pies, and spend hours in am imaginary land. We were never bored unless we were visiting our relatives that lived in an apartment and we had to sit quietly with the adults.
Now I hear children complain that they are bored because they can’t play there video games, cant watch a DVD or TV and cant play on the computer. When you suggest that they read a book, they look horrified. They don’t do book reports anymore, reading take too much time, now the watch movies and type a report on the computer about it. Spelling doesn’t really matter because you have spell-check.
No, Technology hasn’t really made my life easier; it has made it busier, noisier and more stressful. Time to turn off the computer and go relax with a good book. Want to join me?