A fellow named Daniel Sieberg was telling me his hard-and-fast rule for getting through the night.
He takes all of his digital devices -- laptops, tablets, cellphones, anything portable that has a screen -- to another room before he turns off the light. He has come to terms with the fact that the technological gadgets that have so thoroughly insinuated themselves into our lives can become addictive.
So, when it's time for slumber, he locks them out. He won't even let his cellphone charge overnight in the bedroom:
"If it's there, I would have the temptation to turn it on and check it."
We have learned to celebrate, even revere, the wireless gadgets we carry around and the inventors who bring them to us; the response to the death of Steve Jobs this month was emblematic of how important our do-it-all phones, our computers, our tablets and related digital devices have become. We say that the technology has changed life as we used to know it.
But how much is too much?
And, more to the point: How many of us have the nagging feeling that we are somehow unable to disconnect -- that the electronic devices we own have begun to own us?
There is an instinct to treat the subject whimsically: "Land o'Goshen, Ma, those kids are walking down the street staring at their cellphone screens." It's as if any criticism of what the digital age has done to society brands the person raising the questions as backward, afraid of change, irrationally wedded to outmoded ways.
read more at http://bit.ly/s6im7M
No comments:
Post a Comment