My internet went out last week. It was some freak thing. The internet guy didn’t even know why it wasn’t working. I have my suspicions, but they have more to do with the super natural than with wires and blinking lights.
Regardless of why my internet went down, I still had to endure several days of…well…silence. (Oh, I should mention here that it wasn’t just my internet, but the cable and phone were out too.) Personally, I didn’t mind it so much EXCEPT I couldn’t keep up with my blog AND I had a deadline. I guess I did mind it. But I didn’t miss all that other stuff as much as I thought I would.
Remember life before the internet? If you’re under 40, you probably don’t. Let’s think about this for a minute. Do you suppose folks once said, “Remember life before the telegraph?” “How’d we ever survive?” I’m no expert on history stuff (hence I use the word stuff instead of being more specific), but I bet life was slower back then.
Things slowed down for me over the weekend. I actually got to sit on my back porch and ponder. (Until a weird flock of birds crowded into the trees and freaked me out.) I know there’s great things about being connected, and the world getting smaller, but I miss the slow days, the times when I actually got bored cause there was nothing to do.
Everyone says technology has made our lives easier. There’s an App for almost everything. There’s the flashlight app, and the calorie app, and the runpee app (if you’re an avid moviegoer with a small bladder, you might want to check into that one.) But maybe it’s stealing something from us too. Maybe it’s stealing away those quiet moments when, in the midst of nothingness, a thought comes to mind or we happen a glance into someone’s eyes and notice a twinkle there or a tear.
Being a blogger, I probably shouldn’t denounce the internet, but I also need a clunk upside the head every now and then to remind me that the real world isn’t on a computer screen and that there are people in my life that I need to hear from and that need to hear me. I can say with great certainty that the most precious moments in my life did not happen while I sat at a computer. I’m sure there are exceptions to that…like a marriage proposal popping up in a chat window or reconnecting with an old friend through Facebook, but neither of those would mean much if there wasn’t a real person sitting on the other side.
What do you think? Am I being too hard on technology or maybe I haven’t been hard enough…
YOU ARE NOT TOO HARD. Just glad that you are back. Hey Don’t get any harder. love and miss you so much, and of course the rest of you precious family.
LOVE YOU ALL
I agree with you. I feel like in the developed world, we have become very reliant on technology, which is good for very much such as science processes becoming more efficient, but not so good for things like the teenagers that claim they “cannot live without a smartphone.” But, we cannot forget the alarming rate that technology is being discovered. Therefore, we must learn to use discretion on how much we ought and ought not to depend on technology. For me being in school, I freak out when I don’t have access to the internet because so much of my… Read more »