Friday, September 25, 2009

Living Sanely With Technology

Three social networking sites, two email accounts, cell phone, twelve podcast subscriptions, list serves, YouTube, hulu, this blog, blogs I follow…. Much of our lives are immersed with technology. In addition, many of us face the challenges in the field to keep up with the latest web 2.0 applications. There are days when I spend all day at work on the computer only to come home and log on again. If we are not careful, we can get lost in it all.

Technology offers us some wonderful opportunities. It is easier to connect with friends. We can video chat with professional contacts. We can connect to patrons across the city, state our country. Journals and newswires come straight to our monitors. I can even access digital reproductions of ancient manuscripts that a few years ago could only be seen by a few major scholars.

Then there is the dark side of technology. I heard on NPR yesterday about a young lady who could not stop texting and driving even though she had already been in two accidents. In one of the accidents, she was seriously injured. One of our instructors the other day said that he is finding that many of his younger students no longer are able to express ideas verbally. The dark side of technology is that it can diminish our humanness. It can give the appearance of life without the substance.

So how do we keep from going too far? One way comes from the world of spirituality. It is called unplugging. Unplugging is setting aside technology free time. This could be a couple of hour a week, one weekend morning a week, or whatever best suits your lifestyle. Use this time to read, create something or just relax. The idea is that, by stepping away from technology for a while, we can connect better to our inner self and rediscover our sense of being human.

It is important to keep in mind that technology was created for us, and not we for technology. Life is measured in moments, not bytes.

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