The Digital Lifestyle
A journalism student at the University of Westminster worked on an item about addiction to technology and this is quite an old item. In 1998 (if I remember correctly) I was speaking to a security guard in Martinique about the internet and he talked about it as if it was a disease as if it was bad.
Back in my high school days would argue with my teachers trying to get permission to draw the graphs by computer rather than doing them by hand. This happened both in geography and chemistry. One teacher commented: “What about when you’re on the field?” going on to explain that technology would not always be at my reach.
Since then things have changed and technology has progressed to such an extent that I could now create that graph on my XDA Mini S and e-mail it to whomever I’m working for. Of course, the batteries might die but the potential is there and innovation is changing society as a whole.
In my bedroom, I have a MacBook pro, an iBook, one Nokia, one Sony Erricson, one xda, one 500 gig drive, one terabyte drive, and one 200 gig drive. I’ve got a lot of technology but my work is based around this technology. One phone is a spare, another is for Switzerland and the third is for England. This is so that I don’t need to pay international fees when making phone calls in countries I visit often.
As I’m writing this post I’m listening to music from someone’s playlist on last.fm and that’s American music streamed from a London based company bought by CBS fairly recently. The blogging software I’m using is open source and the image in the banner was taken in Les Diablerets Switzerland.
Topically last night there was a power cut in the street where I live and it took them several hours to fix. As a result of this, the wired life I am used to was put on hold for a number of hours. I didn’t go to sleep any earlier. I watched one of the blue planet documentaries instead, as you do.
As a side note, I did once believe in internet and technological addiction. I went to Tanzania for 21 days to help build schools and for a 7-day safari. During this time I decided that I would not touch a computer, I would have nothing to do with technology aside from the camera.
I walked down the muddy roads from one school to another. I saw a much simpler way of life. I saw a different way of life which I appreciated far more. In fact, I wanted to stay there so I’d avoid coming home to the stress of the IB. It’s during this trip that I saw that the addiction some people talk about does not exist.
Either you get with the times or you’re left behind. I’m comfortable with technology so use it constantly.
Finally, I’d like to address a comment at the end of the item about texting. Twitter and Jaiku should have been mentioned as extreme examples of technological addiction.