Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Tech 1

This is my new theme: technology is changing our lives.  It does not seem startling, but really it is, because the changes are much more far-reaching and long-lasting than people realize. for our old life-style it is a death by a million tiny cuts.

I am not one who believes that the great Singularity is coming, but things are very different.

My first post about it is simple.  It began with a tiny insight.

I walked into the waiting room to bring in my next patient.  There were four people there, waiting for everyone in our office.  We have the best magazines of any waiting room I have every been in.  We get, mostly for free, Yankee, People, Rolling Stone, Discover, and a few health and women's mags that I can't tell one form the other.

But, at that moment, and then I noticed for the rest of the day, one person, and she was about sixty, read a magazine.  Twenty people were playing with their phones: texting, playing games, updating apps, on Facebook, all of that.

Piles of unread, fancy paper, wasted.

Is  the world better or worse?  Not a relevant question.  this is the way it is and it will only become more so.

2 comments:

Lena said...

Your office sure does have great magazines! I enjoy technology, but I also like sitting and waiting for an appointment with a good magazine!

Amanda said...

Imho I think the world will be better for it.

While it can be a great time waster, the Internet is also an amazing place of knowledge. Never before has it been so easy to answer one's questions about almost anything!

As a child I dreamed about living in a library and my dream has now come true.

The Arab revolution did not start on TV - it started on the Internet.