This was an old post that was supposed to be published months ago...
I'm a computer programmer. I develop software. I spend my entire day emersed in a world of 1's and 0's and when I'm not programming for them, I'm fixing them. I love almost every second of it too, so believe me, I realize the irony in this statement:
I don't like technology.
I should clarify that statement. I mean most technology.
My boss joked the other day, pointing out my love of paper and pen when clearly, as an IT and programming professional, you would think I would use something electronic to track this kind of information on. I like my pen and paper. I like the feel of the pen as I write. I like the placement of the text as I write. I like the emotion that's conveyed in the formation of the letters. I like that I remember nearly everything I write because I see it and I feel it. He can joke all he wants - he's the one writing on his iPad with a stylus.
In my first year of college, I had the highest mark my Calculus teacher had ever handed out in his 20 years of teaching. He pulled me aside and very sternly said that while he realized I didn't have the ability to commit to a mathematics, computer science or computer engineer degree, he wanted me to at least meet with the head of the Computer Engineering Technology department. I politely declined. I'd rather visually create (draft) than code... or so I thought. It's always stuck with me though - that conviction in his voice. I never really understood the correlation between programming and mathematics until a much later time in my career. That's what programming is. It's one giant equation, and I'm in the middle of it.
I love efficiency. I hate redundancy. If something has to be repeated more than once in your day, there has to be a way to automate it. It's not that I'm lazy, because I'm certainly ready and willing to work very hard. My day is so jam packed with objectives, duties, and activities, that I don't want to stuff another repetitive task into it... I don't want to fill it with mindless numbing activities either. I didn't improve or hope to make something more efficient so that I can fill that saved time with some other task. I'd like to alleviate some of the feelings of "there aren't enough hours in a day", and allow someone to breath a little.
Unfortunately, that's not the direction that technology has taken us. It has freed up time, only to have that time consumed with more duties and tasks, movies and games, and social feeds. We've freed up time that we normally would have spent talking to a friend or family member to go on Facebook - 'like' a couple of statuses and leave some random comments. That's what our life is reduced to.
I went to my very first 3D movie this year. It was amazing... brilliant... the technology is unfathomable really. Pop on this pair of glasses that look perfectly normal, and suddenly the picture goes from a blurry mess to the Hulk barrelling towards me. I sat in awe for the first 30 minutes until I became bored with the movie. Graphics were great, but honestly the plot just wasn't for me. I spent 2.5 hours in a theater with people I do care about, not uttering a word. Everyone silent and consumed in the projected image before us. I would much rather have spent the time talking to these people, learning more about who they are beyond the little worker bees they become during work hours.
Put down the cell phone. Put down the iPad. Quit cramming more into your already overloaded day. Relax, slow down, and spend some time with the people you love the most, doing the activities you love to do. In the end, all you have is memories - both yours and the people you've created them with. Don't let technolgy take those away from you.
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