How many encounters do you have with technology on a daily basis? I don’t mean public technology such as street lights, freeways, stuff like that; I mean your computer, your iPod, LCD screens, smart phones, etc. How many times? Let’s have a little experiment and describe what would come to be an ordinary day in anyone’s life (people with access to technology).
You wake up in the morning when the alarm on your cell phone goes off. The alarm is probably a song you downloaded to your phone. You get up, and if you are a real coffee lover, coffee’s already there waiting for you if you have an automatic drip set up. Let’s say you don’t and you pick up your coffee on the way or at the office/school. Let’s skip over to when you arrive at school/work. You open anything that has access to a WiFi connection (cell phone, laptop, desktop). You surf Facebook, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Twitter, (a certain blog if you know what I mean).
If you have WiFi on your cell, then you’re doomed. You’re hooked on it all day long, checking status updates, emails and what not. You come home after a long day and turn on your flat screen TV with a satellite signal. You fix yourself a microwave dinner or you order in on your wireless phone.
All this was a quick glimpse. I skipped a zillion other details anyone could have. Let’s go back to the eternal connection on the phone. Believe it or not, I’ve chatted with people on MSN who are sitting right next to me. Does that dehumanize us? Does all that turn us into robots or heartless beings? How much is too much? I’ll say, I wake up every morning and feel human. I love, laugh, sweat, cry, fight, hug, everything. People are still around me.
Will there be a day in which I wake up and not know what it is to do all that? May be, just maybe one day in the future that could happen; but from where I’m standing, I see a lot of laughter, hugs, tears, and heartbeats coming our way. Some other generation will worry about it, still being our future as society, it IS OUR problem.
Remember, technology is just a means, not an end. Smile every day, breathe in and remember, you are still you, you are still human. Try to keep it that way.