For someone
who has been described as very much a person who behaves and has the attitude
of someone much older than himself, technology is an inescapable part of my
life that I ashamedly struggle to function without. A last minute change of
unexpected circumstances led me to head home for the weekend just gone as I had
a work induction for my Christmas job. As it was late notice and the day I was
to leave on was ridiculously busy, it meant that I couldn’t take my laptop home
with me. Well.
For the first day the problem didn’t
seem to rear its head; I checked my e-mails on my phone, sent and received some
tweets and Facebook comments and occasionally just filled some time by browsing
on various useless apps I happened to download that really are nothing more
than battery-sapping wastes of space. My sudden realisation that I was missing
the instant satisfaction of my laptop suddenly smacked me in the chops on the
second day, when I realised that I had wanted to print some things off using
the printer at home. Resorting to using my parents laptop made me realise
straight away my pathetic dependence on a 15” slab of plastic filled with
electronics. It made me realise just how much of my day I am spent researching
seminar prep, researching course books, browsing useless websites or watching
videos on YouTube, if those last two things are even mutually exclusive, and
made me feel quite strange.
When did this happen? When did I let
my life be dictated to me by this object that I’m supposed to own when it looks
like the ownership is opposite to what I perceive it to be? Will this
relationship with technology ever even die? I just don’t know. All I know is
that after just three days I felt like what I imagine it might be like for
smokers to go cold turkey or for an alcoholic to set every drop they own on
fire. Perhaps not to that extent but there was a definite yearning for
something I didn’t have that I wanted and felt I needed.
The thing is that everything
nowadays is so much easier because of computers, like it or not. I still
haven’t bought into the idea of EBooks. Not because I don’t like the concept,
but because I prefer a physical printed page; it’s a preference rather than a
dismissal. But technology allows us to communicate faster and more frequently,
to shop online (and be financially rewarded for doing so) and gives us access
to views and opinions from all over the world that books, either printed or
not, cannot give us. Plus, the internet also has digital comics and what’s not
to like about that? Only me? Oh, okay.
That said, I know most of the
audience of this blog will feel the same. Those of all ages. See, It’s not just
those under the age of twenty who have fully embraced new technology, it’s
spreading across each generation – my Grandma has just created a Facebook
account for god’s sake! It makes me wary when some people are so oblivious of
the generations behind them embracing modern things; it displays an inherent
ignorance that I find it hard to comprehend.
We are becoming more reliant upon modern
technology; it’s just the way of the world. There are plenty of traditional
“technologies” still in play, some of them working better than their modern day
equivalents and some of them are just preferences (straight razors and
turntables spring to mind straight away), but we shouldn’t be afraid to embrace
what’s coming. Every new technology has instilled caution in the public that
received it, but if they hadn’t have received it, where would we be? Saying
“ug” and wearing loin cloths is my bet.
