- Glorious Sunsets
I met with a friend and her fiancée for coffee the other day. The whole time we were sitting in the local dinner enjoying our cuppa’s and talking about the changes in our lives since the last time we saw each other, she and her fiancée both were sort of obsessed with their iPhones.
I do not have an iPhone. I don’t even have a cell phone. Of any sort. Period. I did have but…. priorities like food, mortgage and gas took over the phone budget for a while.
It seems like everywhere I turn someone has one of the coolest new gadgets that are coming out or have been out for a while. iPhones, Droids, iPads… Garmens, Kendals or Kins.. the list goes on. My husband says that the tech sector is trying to make it so that everything you need several gadgets to do now, can be accomplished from one small hand-held device.
I’m not sure how I feel about all of this. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think the new techie trends are cool but… I wander.. as we “smarten” our gadgets, if we aren’t actually dummying down our brains?
When I finally started using a computer, in 1993, I had beautiful hand writing. Today, It looks more like I”m trying to write a prescription than a love letter to my husband.
Spelling used to be something I had to actually think about. Today, my word processor program or my blog software underlines my mistakes in bright red so I can correct them and appear to have perfect spelling before anyone has the chance to point out that I don’t.
My daughter was upset one day that her boyfriend wouldn’t respond to a text message she’d sent him. After a few hours I said.. “why don’t you just call him?” UGH! Little did I realize the grievous error I’d made. Kids today don’t actually know their friends – or boyfriends – telephone numbers. They rely on social networks and cell phone brains to contact one another. She had no clue what his home number was – because it wasn’t programmed into her phone. I was shocked. I can still remember the telephone number we had in 1978!
While I understand the environmental impact of moving towards paperless communications and lightning fast e-connections to do business and talk with our friends, neighbors and relatives, I wander about the social impacts its having on us. The global village may be shrinking, but the human gap is widening.
We “blue tooth” information rather than handing out business cards. We meet for “video conferences” rather than sitting across tables and talking, face to face. We send e-cards rather than drawing crippled flowers and crooked letters that say “Happy Mother’s Day!” across them.
Maybe that’s why I like my handmade business so much. Because in a world of impersonal, and lets face it, often rude or cold – something about “handmade” says “A real live human being” is behind this.
I’m not surrounded by the latest gadget. Heck, I didn’t even upgrade to a laptop until I absolutely had to when the old dinosaur desktop finally bit the dust. My “cool tools” are a sewing machine with 82 built in stitches and an iron that turns its self off if I forget too. To me, that is primo, top of the line technology.
When I was in high-school, I wanted to be one of the cool kids. And I think I probably did want to be one of them until a few years ago, when I realized…. cool is about stuff….and… I’d rather be a nerd.. with substance – a dork with good manners, or… a geek who can still communicate without the means of an electronic device.
