Signs Technology Took Over Your Life- Part 2

You are able to argue persuasively the Ross Perot’s phrase “electronic town hall” makes more sense than the term “information superhighway,” but you don’t because, after all, the man still uses hand-drawn pie charts. You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the exhibit hall in advance. But you cannot give someone directions to your house without looking up the street names. You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon. You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to sell you something, but you think it’s okay for a computer to call and demand that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to receive more information about the product it is selling. You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a-quarter and three-and-a-half-inch sizes. Al Gore strikes you as an “intriguing” fellow. You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know where they are. While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a nine-year-old. You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure enough to say “I don’t know” when someone asks you a technology question instead of feeling compelled to make something up. You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires. You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal. You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably different opinions about which is better, the track ball or the track pad. You understand all the jokes in this message. If so, my friend, technology has taken over your life. We suggest, for your own good, that you go lie under a tree and write a haiku. And don’t use a laptop. You email this message to your friends over the net. You’d never get around to showing it to them in person or reading it to them on the phone. In fact, you have probably never met most of these people face-to-face. You don’t even read magazine articles anymore, unless someone’s keyed them into e-mail and forwarded it to you. You print the itinerary of your vacation from scheduler software. You pack the laptop computer first for any trip. While you’re away from home, the first three numbers you call are your voicenet, a bulletin board, and one of your e-mail accounts. You are reading this from a screen.