Technology "Rant"

Technology

Technology…it is what connects me with my readers, it connects me with my son, in New Mexico, my daughter in Louisiana, my daughter and son in law in Springfield, and my mom in Kansas as well as the rest of my family and friends who are all over the United States.  It makes my job so much easier, unless, of course, there are technical issues.  It is an amazing element in our lives.  We watch TV in HD; we can take a picture on a camera or cell phone and have it posted somewhere on the internet in mere moments.  We have access to movies, food, gifts, flowers, anything you could ever want or need right at your fingertips.

Yet, for all the good it does, and believe me, I love all that it does; technology is part of the reason for the fall of our society.  Okay, maybe that is a little melodramatic, but because of technology we have become lazy, fat and basically are reverting back to nothing but mindless blobs sitting on our couches.  Don’t get me wrong, I love having the internet, my cell phone, and my computer, but when you consider everything that you can do from the comfort of your couch, it almost boggles the mind.  You can order a pizza on your laptop, and watch it progress from an order, to the finished product being delivered and who is delivering it.  You can order a movie from your phone, laptop or desktop and have the instant gratification of watching it before you can even say the title out loud.  I was formulating this blog in my mind the other day when one of my co-workers made the following statement, “With this box, I don’t even have to get my fat ass off of my couch to get a movie, I can order it and watch it with a few clicks of my remote.”  This just added fuel to my already burning idea.

Because of technology, companies are being downsized.  There seems to be no more need for actual customer service.  If you call a company for any kind of assistance, 9 times out of 10, you will have to “push 1 for English” then proceed by punching in more numbers until you get the right selection, then you get to leave a voice mail on a machine and just hope that maybe a real person will eventually hear it.  While technology advances, we, as a society are accepting of the fact that it is putting people out of work.  CEO’s can pocket more money by replacing workers with machines, and unemployment goes up.  However, the unemployed can now go to the unemployment office, file his or her unemployment on a computer, look for work, on the computer, apply for a job, all without standing up, using the phone, or filling out an application the old fashioned way.  We have online job search companies.  Quite a few companies only accept online applications, what happened to being able to look at a potential applicant and getting a first impression that way?  Now days they look at your MySpace, or your Facebook profiles.  How is that relevant?  My Facebook profile is so completely opposite of my MySpace profile that if I were to apply somewhere that they rely on those profiles to make a judgment call, they would be thoroughly confused.  They are as opposite as black and white, good and evil, you get my drift.

When I was a kid, the majority of my time was spent outside, on my bike, climbing trees, hiking, using my imagination. (Oh, and I did just fine riding all over the countryside without a helmet!  We played kickball and didn’t have to worry about someone’s mom complaining that it was too dangerous…oops, that is a whole other rant altogether…sorry, back to the subject.)  A lot of the kids of this generation don’t know how to use their imaginations.  The ones who do are designing video games.  I have a nephew, who, by the way, I am very proud of, that I honestly worried that he would never do anything other than work at Sonic and play games on his PSP.  One day, he got a wild hair up his butt and enlisted in the Army.  Well, all of those years playing video games actually paid off.  He is now flying drones.  Like I said, I am very proud of him.  And Dom, if you happen to read this, believe me when I say this, “You did good!!!”

My first semester back in college was a real eye opener for me.  I bought a flash drive to keep things on.  I didn’t realize how handy that little bit of technology would be.  At one point, I had two classes that I had to do research in for papers that I was writing.  If I would have done it the old fashioned way, I would have had boxes of printed out pages.  I had over 600 pages of research for one paper, and a little over 350 for the other.  Lucky me, I had all of it on my flash drive.  All that information on a piece of “plastic” that was just a little bigger than the keys on my key ring.  I now have 4 of them and wouldn’t give them up for anything.  I can store pictures, this blog, music, and anything else on it that I want.  (Except for movies, none of the ones that I have are big enough. Lol)

I don’t want anyone to think that I hate technology, I just detest the results that it is having on our society, the laziness, the apathy to the fact that we are getting fat, lazy and apathetic.  We all need to power down, cut loose, and get off our asses every once in a while and actually remember what it is like to actually LIVE and not just read about living on the internet.  Even though I rarely go a day without checking my MySpace, Yahoo, or Facebook sites, I know that I can.  I’ve gone as much as 2 days without being on a computer, I’ve read, gotten outside and enjoyed the snow, and just reminded myself of simpler days before I tethered myself to my cell phone, computer and HD TV.

Again, technology is a wonderful thing, something I wouldn’t trade for the world, but there are times that I wish that I could get away from it…even for just a little while.

Thanks for reading and as always:

Love to all,

Raveyn