Thursday, August 25, 2011

A Multi-edged Sword


This morning Miléna and I found ourselves standing in good-sized puddles, looking out from under the roof of our flooded entryway as the lights in the 7/11 across the street flicked off. While my first thought was, ‘quick, let’s go-- must save their ice cream!’, it was followed closely by a mini-panic at my powerlessness in face of this sudden externally-imposed disconnect. After a few minutes of fussing about what to do without electricity, I accepted my fate and relaxed. Eyes closed, lying back on my bed listening to an interesting podcast, I felt the power click back on, only a couple hours after it went out. Fan whirring, light shining in my eyes… I was less relieved by the power’s return than I thought I would be. All of a sudden, the options for a rainy Thursday are overwhelming. Email my coworkers to reschedule the report-writing lesson I was supposed to give today before the monsoons interrupted (cool, huh?), email friends I’ve been drafting emails to, look for jobs, plan the next few weeks… or troll facebook, scan the headlines… the distractions are there now and I know the podcast I was listening to will no longer be as engaging as a result.

This constant need to be connected while simultaneously feeling the burden of such a need is a common topic in social commentary, both old and new. I just read a Crimson article from 1995 addressing the hold email was beginning to take on peoples’ lives. Looking at their numbers for comparison, the internet’s influence was minuscule compared to what it is today. Questions about how technology is changing how we’re living now, and the ways we’re “plugging in and checking out” are definitely floating through the air, I just wonder how many people actually feel the way I do about this dilemma, and how many don’t see it as a dilemma at all. There are varying degrees of connectedness which different people advocate, and I find myself wondering where people fall across the spectrum.

The idea of technology as a double-edged sword is always on my mind, but recently I have found this struggle of balancing my life among different facets of the prism to be harder than usual. On days I’m not visiting communities I sit at the office, doing any manner of things on my computer for 3 hour chunks of time, broken up by the occasional lunch or snack break. These days are exhausting and stultifying… I can literally feel the fatigue reaching into my already meager supply of creativity, stirring around and muddling things up, only to cram in balloons of useless abundance, leaving me with a headache and a lack awareness—both of my self and my surroundings. How do I retain any semblance of creative spirit if I need to rely on the internet to function in the society I choose to participate in?

Technology places upon us so many expectations that I find stifling, yet others seem to find them useful and just par for the course. I hate skype for the ways it puts me across from people, but never with them. I hate the way friends’ eyes glaze over when you’re talking to them as they see their blackberries blinking out of the corner of their eye. I love sharing my thoughts on my blog, and having interesting email discussions with friends, but I hate feeling like I need to respond to every email, lest my mother thinks I’ve croaked because 24 hours have passed without an update (Hi mom, love you!). I love the fact that you can conjure up facts at will with google and wikipedia, but when I read a recent article touting a “plugged-in vacation” I was filled with a visceral revulsion. The author argued that his iphone provided fun and educational supplements to an old-fashioned vacation. I can’t help but see the word “supplant” in place of “supplement” and at parts of the article I was convinced he was making this argument tongue-in-cheek. It felt like he didn’t explore the issue, and that he hardly stopped to consider his relationship with technology. Then again, perhaps that’s just what a plugged-in vacation does to you, anyway. And through it all I keep asking myself-- am I not seeing something different? Something that one can’t quantify with words and example, nor should one try? And—do others see it too? How do you explain this need to others, how do you save something that cannot be put to words? (this interestingly reminds me of a struggle conservationists often encounter)

Ultimately, it’s not about technology, but about people. I ask myself how to deal with people who are connected in a way that I never wish to be. I ask how to live in a world where the expectations are ones I don’t agree with and therefore often don’t wish to uphold. I ask how to know when to expand my views to include something new and when to stand my ground, confident in my own opinion. But how do I balance these needs? How can I decide what changes are good, and what ones go too far? Where will we be in 20 years? Will I be happy for the times I bent, or will I be stuck in a world where my job requires the use of technology towards which my feelings haven’t changed? I’m nostalgic for an age I’m too young to know. I’m nostalgic for a simpler life, but I’m motivated to keep up as well. I don’t want to be left behind; I want to believe that things won’t move in a direction that will force me to fall back, holding tight to the core of my morals that are just not flexible enough to fit these changes.

--Afternote: This post is a bit one-sided, which is unfair to such a layered topic, and it’s worth mentioning that without technology I wouldn’t have a way to share these thoughts with such a large number of people (well, at least more people than I would reach with a letter), and I likely wouldn’t be in Thailand at all. I realize I rely on it as much as I push it away, and I merely want to mention the balance this relationship requires, so I can later further address this issue as it develops within and around me.