Technology

I've often said that if you are not completely astounded at current technology, you're not thinking about it. Cell phones, MP3 players, laptop computers, DVRs, PDAs, GPS and the list goes on and on. Back when I was a kid, we didn't have cable TV, music technology was the cassette (even LPs and 8-tracks), computer memory was measured by the kilobyte not gigabyte, and cell phones were the stuff of science fiction.

The biggest change is arguably the internet. I'm sitting here in Japan with a computer on my lap which can be held in one hand that is thousands of times more powerful than those of my youth and can do amazing things. I'm listening to NPR radio broadcast thousands of miles away, ordering books and gifts, making hotel reservations in Thailand, catching up with headlines from the NY Times, Washington Post, and ESPN, sending email, and making phone calls! All with a 5 or so pound piece of plastic and silicon. Simply amazing.

There is a downside, however. Aside from hours which can be wasted surfing the web or playing sudoku online, websites can be infuriating, especially when trying to order things to be shipped overseas. While I zipped through dozens of transactions for gifts and hotels, I was stymied by one book order. For 3 weeks, I've tried to order the most recent edition of a book by my PhD examiner, Christian Reichardt and have it shipped to Japan. Several websites weren't happy with an order to be shipped to one country but paid for with a credit card in another. OK. So then I tried using Yumi's credit card but other problems ensued. After three weeks, three different websites, and literally a dozen hours trying to sort it out, I gave up and bought it with my US credit card and had it shipped to my sister who will have to ship it to me here.

It reminds me of a good book I read a couple of years ago: Better Off by Eric Brende. He and his wife lived with the Amish for a year and a half and the lesson they came away with is that when in doubt, less technology is better than more. They do dishes and laundry by hand, bike most places, have no TV, etc. I'm not sure if I completely agree with the degree to which they eschew technology (I have no desire to wash my clothes by hand for instance) but I do agree that we should explicitly choose our technologies and other material goods and be conscience of material and energy consumption, knowing the tradeoffs; the costs as well as the benefits. It's easy to get carried away in our modern lives and forget that we have choices about how we live; how we spend our time, what things we buy, and what impact we have on the Earth.