The Downfall of Technology

Technology is amazing. We have a plethora of information at our fingertips. On more than one occasion I know that my husband and I have used our phones in the car to find addresses and phone numbers. However, my phone is a little bit older, and it takes awhile to do these simple tasks.  Ironically, I find myself getting super annoyed and impatient, and I almost always make the comment that my phone is total crap, yet 6 or 7 years ago I didn't have this capability at all.  And somewhere in the recesses of my mind I have convinced myself that I NEED a better phone, you know, a phone that costs no less than $100+ even with a 2 year contract. And my 10 year old laments that all of her friends are getting phones too. I tell her that is absurd, but in the back of my mind, I can see why parents buy the phones for their kids.  How did I ever survive childhood without a phone?  Wouldn't it have been much easier for my mom to send a text than hollering out the door, and alerting half of the neighborhood, that dinner was ready?  By the way, my parents don't actually text, even now, they are under the delusional assumption that you actually turn your phone OFF at the end of the day.  They don't seem to understand that people should be able to reach you at  ALL times, and your phone should be near you 99% of the time. Crazy, right?

Then we have laptops and gaming systems.  It is not unusual for an evening to look like this at our house, my hubby on his laptop in the living room, me on mine in the bedroom, my eldest child on the computer in another room, and my youngest on her Nintendo DS floating between the three of us.  If I need to ask my husband a question, it is sometimes too much effort to walk out and ask him, so I just chat him from my laptop.  We could probably go every evening all evening without communicating with each other if we wanted too; all of us squired away in our own little cocoon of technology. 

The other day my husband found a program for all of our pictures, the millions of digital pictures that we own. This program will scan every single picture, after you label the first couple of pictures with the correct names of the people in them, and assign the labels for you.  So, if I want to find a picture of Jim Bob the cousin of a friend's girlfriend's uncle, it will sort through all of my pictures and produce all of the ones that has Jim Bob's mug.  Very cool and kind of creepy too.

Technology is convenient.  Technology is amazing. Technology provides so many opportunities to learn things.  Technology can be lightning fast. But truthfully, I have to wonder what is the cost of technology? Are we sacrificing real relationships for cyber ones?  Is the solitude of such a singular world healthy? Are we losing the ability to socialize, converse, and entertain ourselves without the aid of technology?  

Last night, we decided to be technology free for several hours.  We ate dinner, everyone helped clean afterwards, we played games as a family, and read a few chapters of a book as a family, and it was fun! I have to admit I feel a little guilty sitting here typing this with my laptop on my lap. However, it isn't practical to eliminate technology completely from our lives though, but it certainly is making us aware that if we don't make a concerted effort to cultivate our lives outside of technology then we will lose grasp of what is truly important. I don't see this being an easy transition, in fact, I will wager our kids will wail and gnash their teeth when we limit their technology time, as well as ours. But, the alternative is that eventually our family dynamic completely breaks down. Because over time, we won't really need or know one another anymore.