My Grip on Gadgets
My typical day includes interaction with different kinds of gadgets. For instance, this non-working Friday, I surfed with my laptop (resurrected after a handyman-slash-officemate repaired the broken adaptor), sent and received texts with my cellphone, and listened to MP3 music while having dinner at a fastfood. And before retiring to bed tonight, I’m thinking of checking my schedule for next week and keying in some reminders in my year-old PDA.
Sure, my gadgets have made life easier for me. My MP3 player, only a few centimeters bigger than a matchbox, so light sometimes I even forget it’s hanging on my neck, assures me that I will enjoy the songs coming from the earplugs. No DJ will pester me with his/her sometimes incoherent banter. My PDA helps me carry around details of my schedule, important contact info, quotes from my favorite books, unfinished essays, ebooks I don’t have time to read save for the Wizard of Oz I already finished. It even entertains me with a few (okay, sometimes not just a few) rounds of Bejeweled. As for my laptop(a gift from my bro-in-law), I’m connecting with you with this black contraption with its eighty-nine keys. I’ve written hundreds of pages using this old Dell model. Some published on paper and on the web, some to be hidden in its hard drive memory forever, or until the hard drive crashes. As for my Nokia, today I exchanged texts with an acquaintance, my sister, an author, a psychologist/soon-to-be-writer.
But am I being swallowed by technology?
This self-assessment prompted by a Reader’s Digest article, entitled “Me Me Media,” I pored over earlier. Have these technological tools become so important to me that I will feel that my life will be less meaningful without them? Have these gadgets become mini-gods in the sense that I have already been worshiping them and am drawing significance from them? And have I, in a way, been subconsciously assigning price tags on people based on the gadgets they are tinkering on with their hands?
A part of me is thinking of loosening my grip on these things. Yes, I will continue owning these tools but I will not let them own me. With you as my witness, let me stick this mental post-it: I will not lust after the latest Nokia model, the slimmest laptop, the PDA with more features than I can use, or the MP3 player which could store thousands of songs.
God has already blessed me by allowing me to have what I have. But I need not let these gadgets, and the desire for flashier ones, consume me. For now I would have to teach myself to be thankful. And to be content with what I have. And to spend more time with people than on my gadgets.
I guess I still have a lot to learn. Maybe a day-long gadget fast is in order. Now, if I could just fish out my PDA from my bag and write when that day should be....Uh, er, yes, obviously I still have a lot to learn.
Labels:
Geeky me
8 comments:
I am also becoming so reliant on gadgets... i find it hard to write when using a pen... i prefer to hear the sound of my hands against the keyboard... but i cannot seem to depend on PDAs... i tried to use one once... i often forget that i have one... i think the cellphone and the computer is enough for me :- )- jen
I still like to write using pen and paper. There's something graceful about the pen meeting the paper. Good for you, Jen, how you are able to go through life with minimum gadget requirements. :D
Reading your post makes me feel good about being..how do i say it? what'd the word?..un techie..whatever, you know what i mean? =)
I have a pretty simple (and old) celfone but i still haven't used most of its features. Same goes for my cool mini sound system at home. As my sister is my witness, i just hate reading manuals!
Maybe i will tell a different story when i decide to buy an MP3 player.. but maybe not. Opps, a lengthy comment here. For a moment there i thought i was posting on my blog! (lol)
No problem, drifter. You can post any message regardless of its length here. What is sometimes hard about being a “techie” is when you start recognizing all the “cool stuff” you don’t have. And then you’ll start dreaming about them, planning how you can have them . . . I think being a techie is more a guy than a girl thing. Because at least they do not get emotionally involved with their things. Hmm. But then again, what about this guy we know who calls his precious keyboard Donita and Diana? Haha.
Seriously now, the MP3 will do you good. It will literally be “music to your ears.” :-) BTW, I hate reading manuals too. What I do is find a person with the same gadget and then ask all my questions.
Exactly! Di ba mas personal yun than reading a manual?
No comment on the Donita and Diana bit. hahaha!
i remember when i was doing my thesis, i had no laptop or personal computer.but i still won the best thesis award...
when i was freshman, i didnt have a cellphone but still manage to communicate to my parents thru telephone booths and my friends with letters...
i still don't have an mp3 but still able to listen to my fave songs at wrock.
before i ventured into blogging, i write a lot in my diary...
",)
ouch! this piece hits too close to home for this gadget-salivating dude, beng. hehe. but, yes, things (no matter how fancy and uber cool) are just that - things c",)
Kars, you must really be one smart girl! :-) Yes, lack of technology will never limit one's intelligence and creativity. If we'll just consider those before us who lived with so much less (think no electricity, even!) The Pyramids of Giza, how did they do that with no forklifts etc.? I'm digressing here. But it's great to blog. Here, interacting with you. This is something that not any store-bought diary will let me do.
Hope you enjoyed your brief Davao homecoming.
And to you, sillyserious: "...but, yes, things (no matter how fancy and uber cool) are just that - things c",)" -- Right! And no matter how much we love these things, they could never love us back. :-)
Sorry about the unintentional sting. I think you guys love gadgets the way we girls love bags and accesories and .... So we're pretty even in the loving-worldly-things department.
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