21st
Tech-Mology, is it Good or is it Whack?
I’m sorta old school.
I got my first computer when I was 23 years old. My first e-mail address when I was 25. It was just a couple years ago that Brent, our Director of Administration, made me stop using Microsoft Works (I think it might have been the 1997 version).
When Phileena and I were dating and engaged, I was living in India. The best technology we had then was our trusty old fax machine—the kind with the rolls of thin, shiny paper. For 2 years we hand-wrote letters every day. Real mail. Real stamps. No internet machine making it easy for us.
Even though it’s 2008, I still feel like I’m catching up to the technological advances of the 1990’s. Sad.
Ali G once raised the question, “Techmology, is it good or is it whack?” It’s a good question. One that I ask a lot.
I just got back from Nepal. They keep it real simple there. In an age and reality of globalization, who are you in 2008 if you don’t have an e-mail address? I mean, does the elderly Nepali woman in a rural Himalayan village count as my globalized neighbor?
I love Facebook. But what does “social networking” mean? Virtual community? Could all this digital imaging our ourselves and friendships only aggravate our already malformed perception of intimacy?
My chubby, sausage-like fingers aren’t the fastest texting digits in Omaha, but they still get frequent texting workouts. Are we reducing meaningful interaction by shooting 4-14 word messages to each other throughout the day? What ever happened to calling someone and talking?
Don’t get me wrong. I love technology, at least what I can understand of it. But it seems my friends who are poor, who can’t afford access to computers or cell phones, are experiencing a new form of global disparity.
So maybe technology is whack.
I don’t know for sure though… I’ll guess I’ll have to Google it, or look it up on Wikipedia, maybe even watch a couple more videos on YouTube explaining it better before I know for sure.
