TECHNOLOGY

I am not a technology aficionado. I do not have an iPhone, an iPad or a Kindle. I still like landlines and answering machines. I have a cell phone that receives and sends texts from my son and is rarely used for phone calls. Frankly, the thought of being available 24/7 with a phone on my person at all times is unsettling. Before cell phones made people feel as if they are that important, it was perfectly acceptable to return phone calls when you returned home. Used to be that no call was so vital that it could not wait to be made. Does anyone else feel less than pleased that when you shop these days, you have 3 or 4 cell phone conversations swirling around your mind from other shoppers with phones attached to their ears?

Is it just me, or has the world become less conversational, less relational and more screen-oriented? You go to basketball games or restaurants and people are not watching or visiting. They are TEXTING! People seem obsessed with their cell phone screens, computer screens, TV screens, iPod screens, and their electronic book screens. Seems we now have a generation of kids who ask a date to prom via a text message, a generation of kids who eschew phone conversations and in-person direct-eye contact. Technology has changed human interaction for sure.

For those of you rolling your eyeballs, I can only plead some Luddite blood running through my body, probably more than most people. Ergo, I can write Ludditian.

In my mind, with technology, less is still more. Unfortunately for me, the world does not agree, and every technological advance adds “features” that I neither want nor need. I still like cameras that simply point and shoot, video cameras that have a start/stop button and nothing else, and cell phones that store a few numbers and make phone calls. I like the weight of a good tome and the feel of either new or musty pages of a real book. Why would I read something on-line or on Kindle when I can go to the library and get the book?

I will admit that a GPS system has saved my directionally challenged son hundreds of hours of being lost, and I do have a simple MP3 player that I enjoy on my walks. But you will not find me anytime soon with a phone that tells me where the nearest toilet is in the mall or coughing up big bucks for a cell phone plan that costs any more than my current $8 per month.

All that being said, after my low-key weekend of post-chemo and watching more TV movies than I usually watch in 3 months, I have to say that the one piece of technology that I really like, can understand and use, and am amazed by, is DVR. I love the fact that I can push PAUSE during a live show, take a phone call (on my landline), get a snack, and come back, press PLAY and not have missed a beat. I love DVR’ing the 4 prime time shows that I do watch and then watching them in half the time because I can fast forward at bullet speeds through the commercials. I like the fact that I can electronically store DVR’d shows for as long as I want.

Yeah, DVR rocks. I would not choose to give it up anytime soon. I suppose that takes a half-pint of Luddite blood out of my body.