When I read the first sentence of today's New York Times Morning Newsletter, I felt like there's plenty to say in response to the question.
From the Times:
Good morning.
How do we balance our desire for modern conveniences with our nostalgia for the uncomplicated felicity of our pre-internet past?
My thoughts:
I've felt a lot of nostalgia lately for writing checks to pay all my bills AFTER I have received those bills in the mail and opened them to find with information, like how much I owe, written on a piece of paper rather than trying to track down a vague something floating around in cyberspace. Most often this process needs a password which I usually can't remember.
I have also often repeated my desire to go back to the old-style parking meters where you insert a penny, nickel or dime and the arrow shows you how much time you have before having to drive away from the parking spot or to put in more coins.
These are tangible methods for seeing exactly what is needed and responding with a pen, a check and a stamped envelope or a penny, nickel or dime.
These transactions are made without any outside wonderment with bills actually sent in the mail (which is a damn sight slower than a pony these day) or several moments of standing in public and feeling self conscious that you're might be the dumbest person on earth cuz you can't figure out how to use the kiosk.
Oh for the good ol' days!
Much slower, yes, but then again, maybe not when you consider these days, using the phone to call up a menu and then have to listen to nauseating music for 45 minutes before someone answers and when they do, you often can't understand a word they're saying.
I really do wonder in these times if computers save us time.
I especially wonder about that when some sleazy, mean-spirited slimeball pulls a fast one by scamming, phishing or hacking your phone or your computer.
Then you, the victim, who did nothing other than exist in cyberspace, spend hours and maybe days (sick to your stomach) as you try to rectify the problem that said hacker/scammer inflicted upon you.
Thinking about all the above, which play havoc with our minds and our pocketbooks, makes me very nostalgic for the good ol' days.
Bill and I have talked about this very subject several times recently and have come to the really ugly conclusion that there is virtually no way most of us dumb saps can avoid these situations and still exist on the planet.
We've become wired in to a system where nobody came before and gained knowledge to instruct us of the woes that can happen and how to fix them when they do.
So, we go through periods of temporary insanity while we work our way through the computer-age quagmires that have come with these technology breakthroughs designed to save time.
Okay, that's enough because my time before today's deadline for blog posting is coming to an end so I'd better shut up.
Once more, and every single day, the computer, that was supposed to save time takes up most of my early morning hours creating a computer-generated blog.
One would think that I'd get it and push a giant delete button to stop all this computer craziness.
Some day, maybe.
