Too much technology?

[Carol]

> Ali:
> Funny story.  Many summers ago, at the U. of Pennsylvania, a little
> mouse got into the system, chewed through some wires, and shut down
> the entire university for the rest of the day.  We had electricity,
> the computers worked, and all of that, but the network was very, very
> much incapacited (couldn't even print from your desk), thereby
> rendering the whole university unable to do much work.  And yet I
> still can't quite agree about being too dependent on technology ...
> must be the fact that, as I am often reminded, I've never known life
> before the Internet (but I'll also remind everyone that the Internet
> was born many, many years ago, not in the 90s when it became popular).
> 
> ~Ali, who lives in terror at the thought of life without computers
>
Carol responds:

If only I could go back to a time when high-tech was an IBM Selectric and an eight-track stereo! True, I had to use ditto masters to create tests and assignments for my students, so I was grateful for Xerox machines (excuse me, I mean photocopiers--my generation likes to use brand names generically). We didn't need computers. We typed our business letters and hand wrote our correspondence to our friends and relatives (we still wrote thank you letters in those days, for one). We didn't just rush off an e-mail response (there wasn't any e-mail); we sat down and thoroughly enjoyed the letter and then wrote a thoughtful response to it. (I've saved all my letters from those days. Most of them were worth saving.) We didn't have cell phones annoying people in malls and restaurants and endangering drivers and passengers. We didn't even have pagers until the 1990s. We didn't "meet" other people online or "text" our friends. We knew our neighbors, and we drove to activities (church, school, clubs and organizations) to have real (as opposed to "virtual") fun, or we played board games at home with people we knew rather than online video games with strangers. We didn't need computers to entertain us. We had books and magazines. (Yes, we had television, but I think we had about six channels, not sixty--or three hundred--and we knew its dangers and limitations.) I'm glad to know that some younger people, including you, still read. I know teenagers and children who would rather play video games than read a book or play a board game. 

I miss those days. I really, really miss those days. You could safely walk or ride a bike around the neighborhood then, and children could safely play outside.

Carol, who couldn't be a freelance copyeditor without a computer but still considers herself a slave to technology (and its constant upgrades and "improvements")