Ode to Technology

For those of you reading this, you must have some love for technology, or at least the skills to use it.  For those of you who saw Napoleon Dynamite you may remember the song Kip sings to his wife at his wedding "We met in a chatroom, now our love can fully bloom.   Sure the World Wide Web is great but you, you make me salivate.  Yes, I love technology, but not as much as you, you see.  But I still love technology.  Always and forever."

Well I love technology too.  No I don't have every up to date gadget out there and I am not even aware as to all of the functions of the ones I do have.  I get lost listening to computer techies talk or try to explain things to me and if I do something a certain way that consistently works for me and has been reliable, I am hard pressed to give it up for a faster/easier method.

So I am not the handiest guy out there with a computer, but I love it.  

This is a bit strange for me because in my younger years I foolishly thought that it might be "cool" if the world went on without technology.  

You know, read a few books about life after a post apocalyptic event, see a few movies and would catch myself thinking "Thats the way life should be".

Those days are long gone.

Let's take last weekend as an example.  I attended a surprise engagement for my best friend and his fiance in Baltimore.

I got there because one morning before school at the beginning of June I was sitting at my desk and received an e-mail on my phone inviting me to this party.  Start the clock.  I called my girlfriend to see if she was free that weekend.  2 min.  I looked at flights online and booked 2 round trip tickets and hotel, 8 minutes.  Figured how I would get from the airport to the hotel, 5 minutes, and then looked up restaurants in the area, 5 min.  In 20 minutes I had confirmation e-mails for my hotel and flight, knew how to get to my hotel, and had a pretty good idea of where I was going to eat my first crab, my first raw oyster and my first Yuengling on draft.  How amazing is that????

I actually remember calling a travel agent (do these people still exist?) in the early 90's to book a flight to Chicago.  It took 2 days before everything was settled and then I had to wait for the ticket to come in the mail.  

I think that what technology gives people is the satisfaction and reassurance of something happening immediately.  Cell phones give this to us.

Remember the dreaded period of time from when someone left their house until they arrived at their destination, you had no way to contact them if plans had changed.  So you either had to wait at the original spot until they got there or leave a message for them somehow.  I remember many times discovering something had changed and the first thought being "catch them at home before they leave", usually while frantically dialing a rotary phone cursing the number of 9's and 0's in the number. Now if you're running late or plans have changed, you call.  No fuss.

Some people say that technology will be the end of us.  Maybe it will.  But it sure has been fun writing this Blog sitting sideways in my favorite chair with my feet up.

  Oh how I love technology