Technology Time!

Truthfully, the TV story from Friday reminds me of another that took place that same Christmas.

My mother loves technology. She gets a kick out of the new i-gadgets that come out, so naturally, she picked up an i-pad for Christmas to tinker with, completing her trifecta of owning an iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. I asked her if I could have her old iPod Touch mostly out of curiosity myself (I also love tinkering with technology). However, after a single night with it, I realized that a gizmo like that had no place in my world.

Some find comfort in the vast array of options afforded by their iEquipment for mobile enjoyment, but I find it mostly just distracting.

If I'm on the go, I'm typically paying attention to where I'm going, leaving me unable to play flash games on a tiny slab. If I'm not moving, I usually have my computer, which is the superior choice for fiddling on the internet or playing games or seeking information. And in the odd scenario where I'm not at home and unable to move, it's usually in a situation where I'd feel a little rude playing "Fruit Ninja."

This is not the case for everyone, mind you, but in my world, if I have downtime in which I can't move and it's not offensive to drift off, I would only want the music portion of the iSeries. Anything more seems over the top.

Sure, sometimes it's nice to have a mobile hotspot app, or a TomTom app, or any one of the million other apps that are convenient (and here's where I'm going to start sounding old), but in a world where information flows literally endlessly towards you, we're overloaded with stimuli, unable to stop and appreciate something atechnological, like nature or the simple process of trial and error or even getting lost and having an adventure.

As a huge proponent of technology, I think having all the world's knowledge at our fingertips is amazing and should be utilized by everyone. But we also need to remind ourselves to be distant sometimes. Back away from technology and appreciate the non-digital world.

Ultimately, each person is different, so I can't, say, give my girlfriend withering looks when she plays flash games on her iPhone during many periods of downtime. But I can choose for myself to keep fully separate my connection with technology (specifically my computer) versus my connection with the non-digital world. [Although to be completely fair, that's getting increasingly difficult, since the entire world is approaching symbiosis with technology. And maybe I'm on the wrong side of history for wanting the two to remain distinct enough that we can tell the difference... Who knows?]

To be sure, the "culprit" (if I want to implicitly mark it as a problem) is mostly mobile devices. Tablets, smart phones, laptops, Nooks, Kindles, etc. We hang out with friends and family, and we always seem to have something open. We're fidgeting with some piece of technology to keep ourselves busy. I don't necessarily think this is bad.
In truth, I don't even think the human attention span is actually shrinking, as many would suggest examining the same set of behavior. No, I think we're experiencing an existential overload. Humans were so incredibly limited before on a day-to-day basis. A kid raised on a farm didn't have a huge selection of books to read or friends to play with or things to do. Being bottlenecked into certain hobbies or activities was, in truth, somewhat productive. We grew and learned certain things because there was nothing else to do. The notable exception would be when faced with libraries, where the knowledge was similarly immeasurably vast.

Here's my theory- when faced with untold resources, most people break down and regress in order to avoid the phenomenal task of making a decision out of millions of options. We see a library- something that has a book for everyone. But instead of reading, we go drinking with our friends. Combing through the books would take immense commitment and a certain lust for exploration that we rip from our children through the education system.
Nowadays, that infinite access is at our fingertips almost at all times. So, instead of being bottlenecked into a few very specific hobbies or conversations, we do something mindless (relatively) and self-indulgent to avoid the angst of billions of choices and not knowing how to proceed. We text our friends. We play little flash games. We scout Reddit or 4chan. Safe zones where we know what to expect and our minds are not taxed.

This is all, of course, the result of an education system and, indeed, a populace wholly unprepared for the implications of the internet and the growing world of technological marvels. This is an unpopular opinion (and a fiscally irresponsible one), but the kids that get iPads through their school in elementary school? That's probably good for them. They're getting access to the infinite world of the internet earlier and systematically learning how to utilize it properly. It may very well be that this coming generation is the first generation that will truly know how to, as a whole, use technology to the extent of its capacity.
The system needs to embrace and integrate this incredible world as early as possible, since it's not just a niche market anymore- this is the future of our very way of life. It's not something we can choose to avoid or ignore anymore. It's not simply a convenience to have a computer now- it's almost a necessity. This technology will continue to progress and surpass previous models at an unbelievable pace, and it simply doesn't do the future justice to try to make kids learn about this world on their own.

[Here I am contradicting my earlier desire to remain partially distant from technology, now telling the world to embrace it. Oye, my nostalgia's fighting my common sense... In fairness though, I wrote this last part several days after the first part.]

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Waddle