I decided to rewrite my blog post for this week after having technical difficulties with my website which I found to be quite funny considering I spent my last blog post talking about my struggles with technology and how I would like to get better at it. While I often feel as if I am an anomaly within my own generation, I can also appreciate my own ignorance in respects to technology. Should we be proud of how our society is overly consumed with technology? Our advances in the digital age are nearly past the point of believable. We should be proud of how far we have come technologically, but yet we are constantly trying to use technology less. Many people I know had the new years resolution this year to be on their phone less and in the moment more. As a society we appreciate the idea of going out into the woods for a few days and leaving our digital world behind. Why is that if so many of us see technology as a positive part of our life? I see it as a positive part of my life but there are also moments where I hate the fact that I use technology at all and wished it was different. I grew up on a farm in a rural area and I didn’t start using computers or even had a phones until I was around 13. When I think back on my life before technology consumed it, I miss it. However, I also feel like I was more ignorant. Not only because of my age, but I learn so much on a daily basis because of technology. If I have a question, I can have it answered in seconds. If you grew up without technology, how does your life feel different nowadays? Do you often wish you could go back in time where digital age wasn’t so present in your life? I do.
January 30, 2018
January 30, 2018
3 Comments
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Keith Bunting
February 1, 2018 — 1:31 pm
Wow, that’s a really interesting observation about home. I too grew up surrounded by little technology access relative to other children I knew growing up, and I remember ‘home’ more fondly before I surrounded myself with laptops, phones, and TV screens. I wonder how Jeannette’s life would be different from the book if she had grow up with the kind of technological access and immersive media we possess today. Do you think technology can improve or better our idea of home, or does it more or less detract from the quality of life we often ascribe to feeling at ‘home’? It’s still a compelling take on how we interact with society and technology nowadays.
darbyu
February 4, 2018 — 10:07 pm
I totally agree that there is so much irony in the fact that people say they want to use technology less, and yet we keep becoming more and more dependent on it. I am definitely one of those people, even though I love having the benefits of technology. I often think back to my childhood, when I didn’t have a phone and my parents limited my TV time, and I think about how I played outside all the time, and how much more fun that was. I was almost never wishing I could just go watch TV.
It’s sad, though, that kids who can’t afford things like phones and computers, are now at risk of falling behind. Kids like Jeannette and her siblings, who already have so much to struggle with, now have to worry about keeping up with a technology centered world without having technology. I wonder how Jeannette would cope with that struggle if she were a kid today.
Cole
February 9, 2018 — 3:15 pm
Love your blog aesthetic and the picture of Autzen to start it off.
In terms of your post, I think about the positives and negatives of technology a lot. One thing I liked that you pointed out is how our questions can be answered in seconds using technology. I think this takes away part of our ability to critically think. We don’t spend much time “wondering” or using other experiences in our life to answer a question – rather we can just look it up. Also, because we are usually on our phones or other devices during our “down” time or right before we go to bed, we spend less time deep thinking than we did in the past. Sometimes our best ideas and greatest insights come when we have nothing to do and are just letting our minds wander – and that seems to have disappeared in this new age of technology, at least to a certain extent.
-Cole