Finally, on the tech notes
My wife said to me this afternoon, “Do you think you’re too reliant on technology?”
I thought about that for a moment, picturing myself 20 years ago hanging out in the woods with good friends, drinking beer and smoking cigars and playing poker and playing practical jokes — a fond memory, utterly free of tech enslavement because we wouldn’t allow phones let alone any other real tech up there (whatever existed in 1985 or so) — and much as that memory continues to tantalize, I said, “Actually, without this technology I couldn’t get done even a small fraction of what I do.” (And yes, I do speak in complex sentences.)
I love the tech for the working freedom it’s given me. And when next I’m able to be someplace like those woods, I’ll turn it off.
April 11th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I remember reading and then seeing the story on The Outer Limits about a man who was overwhelmed with too much communication. The story predated the internet and cell phones. At the time it was considered science fiction. In today’s age it is not science fiction.
Here are the ways you can be reached electronically today:
1) e-mail
2) instant chat
3) fax machine
4) cell phone
5) regular phone, with multiple lines
6) pager
At times all of this can become too much for a person to take. There comes a time when, like the man in the story, that you reach a breaking point. All too often we are deluged with receiving information and trying to respond to requests for information at work and at home.
To keep our sanity we need to be able to say enough. Shut off the cell phone. Shut off the outside world for a while and look at what’s important to us. We all need a “Cabin Weekend” just to reconnect to people in a physical way, not just electronically.
Paul
April 11th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
No one has a pager anymore….
April 12th, 2007 at 4:29 am
At work I have two pagers. One when away from my desk and my reps (I am a supervisor in a casino/hotel) need me and another if I am working a specil event.
Paul
April 14th, 2007 at 7:41 am
I’m not bragging or nothing, but I believe I was the first to bring a cell phone to the Cabin, in 1989 or thereabouts. I actually have a photograph of myself using the device, at the wheel of my incredibly expensive 1979 Fiat Spider 124 convertable (the phone was gigantic, in a bag, weighed about 4lbs), my photographer, none other than Mr. ‘never see a print darkroom’ Crist! Thanks for that Paul, (you’re specil too) it’s hanging up in my ‘technology den’ overlooking Indian Cabin Road, the path to adventure!