After work, I tend to sit down and respond to the texts I have received during the day. As I typed, my cell service went down.
It was down until that next morning.
A friend of mine was visiting a city in a nearby state when it happened. She had been using her phone to navigate and was completely lost when her service went down. She finally tracked down a paper map to find her way out of the city and back to familiar territory.
She is just one person, but how many others found themselves in a similar situation?
I don’t travel a huge amount, but when I do, it is so easy to just get the directions from my phone. But when your service goes down you’re in trouble.
If you rely on the Internet to work, how do you work when the Internet goes down? When you rely on your cell phone, how do you call out in an emergency, or navigate in a strange place?
What if you’re in college, studying for a test using a digital textbook when your computer, phone, or tablet breaks? How do you study if you can’t access your book or your notes? How do you take an online test when your Internet goes down or your computer breaks?
What if you’re in a strange city and your navigation app won’t load? How do you get where you’re going, and how do you find the way home if you drop your phone and it breaks?
I adore technology. Technology is a wonderful thing when it works. But the experience of my friend is making me think long and hard about my dependence upon it.
What do you think? Do you believe that we may be putting too much trust in the technology we use everyday? Why or why not?
I would love to have your opinion on the subject.
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I’ve written a lot of books sharing my odd view of life in hopes of helping others. My most notorious book is titled The Shoestring Girl: How I Live on Practically Nothing and You Can Too, but The Minimalist Cleaning Method is pretty popular as well. You can find them at the following places:
Barnes and Noble
Apple iBooks
Smashwords (non-DRM)
I spend my day going from my phone to my tablet to my laptop to my TV. I have no idea what I would do without them. I guess, I’d go downstairs to our apartment complex’s library and get a book. I used to read real books, after all.
I feel you! I use my phone more than anything these days. I’ve got it set up so that I use it to work on my book. It allows me to take advantage of the spare moments I have, but I still use my laptop for other tasks.
Losing my TV wouldn’t phase me. Losing the Internet would affect me because I wouldn’t be able to work on this website or access the news.
And since I tend to use my phone for those things as well as navigation, that concerns me.
Is it even SAFE to rely on technology to the degree we rely upon it?
It is getting to the point where we have no alternatives to today’s technology. Pay phones are no longer available. Library budgets are being slashed and e-books are promoted over the printed book. ( Heck, the five major publishing companies are trying to sue the library system over ‘book sharing’!! ). Can you even get a printed map of your city? I remember when, working as a home care nurse 30+ years ago, I located the homes of my patients using a paper map. I really got to know the city very well. I just don’t have the same sense of ‘location’ using a GPS. When I was growing up (I am 65 now), my mother subscribed to two daily newspapers, our local weekly paper and 5-10 print magazines. Can’t do that today- I would go broke. So, the internet it is (and I still don’t subscribe living on a fixed income now AND with today’s dollar not going as far as it did back then. No, I don’t think it is safe to rely on technology but we are being left with no choice. Unless we opt out of it like Mark Boyle has, we are forced to use it.
Perhaps we can’t opt out completely, but what if we bought physical copies when we could? If we bought second-hand, we’d even help the environment as well as our wallet.
Can you tell me more about Mark Boyle? I’ve not heard of him before.