2009

This is something I got in my work email on Friday...

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2009 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven ' t played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12. You ' re reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

Isn't this interesting? Every single item on the list has something to do with the way we use technology. I personally had more to add to the list - items like,"You have attempted to open your front door with the key fob that unlocks your car door" and "You have set down your cell phone on the desk and attempted to use it as your mouse". Strangely enough, I got a list like this back in 2004. Although some things on the list had to do with technology, it wasn't quite as comprehensive as this one.

It got me thinking on one of my favorite tangent topics - is technology really helping us? Are our lives better than they were in BC (Before Cell)? My answer sometimes depends on the day, but most of the days I would say yes. My bills are paid on time, I'm better connected with my friends and family, I'm much better informed about the world, and so on. These are all great benefits. What could possibly be the problem with that?

I don't know that there is one, necessarily - but tech has definitely changed the way we relate to each other. Take social networking, for instance. This is something I'm studying quite a bit lately, and I've built a couple of social networks of my own, in order to explore a few questions. With all of this connectivity going on, I wonder if the quality of these connections is better than what we're used to. Are we putting less into the face to face relationships that we already have in favor of online connections? I wondered a lot about this in my freshman year at college. This was way back in 1992, when the Internet was just being introduced. There was a woman at my dorm who could constantly be seen in the computer lab. Despite all this apparent activity, she flunked out that first semester. It seems that the hours she had logged in were not homework related, but new-online-boyfriend-in-New-Zealand related. That is an extreme case, of course, but I think that this kind of thing is happening in many of our lives, albeit to a lesser degree.

That said, I absolutely love social networking. I think it's because I have uncommon interests, hobbies, etc - sometimes it's hard to get a good conversation going. The topics I'm interested in are not usually popular, and most people's eyes glaze over when I start talking about technology. With the advent of social networking, I no longer need to rely on a face to face conversation with whoever I'm standing next to - I can find someone with the same interests online, with just a couple of clicks. It's this "specialized interest" feature that I think keeps drawing people in.

Also, I love finding people (and being found) on Facebook. I'm sure this won't continue forever, but it's changing my perspective about many things. First, friends really add to my life. Also, you never know what kind of influence you have on another human being. I tend to think of events as the primary shapers of my perspective, but I could be wrong. It's easy to organize your life into different events which chronologically populate a timeline. This happened, and it caused this, then this happened as a result of that, and so on. We spend our time thinking about these events, worrying about things we don't want to happen, hoping for things we do want, and so on. What if our main focus is wrong? What if it's perception or attitude, rather than events, which shape our lives?

Here I've gone all philosophical on you. How did this happen, Gentle Reader? We started out on technology and ended up with the meaning of life - all I can say is, if you know me, then it probably seems like a normal conversation. That's it for now - I really must do my homework.

Cheers, everyone.