Confessions of a Non-Techie — Part 2

Welcome back!
So, last week I conceded that I use my fair share of technology. Why, then, am I being left further and further behind in a storm of Blackberries, Blueteeth, phones that are smaller than a credit card, and everything else that I don’t even know enough about to know that I don’t know it?

There is just too much going on for the average person to keep up with the tech race. Or at least, this is my definition of tech race… keeping up with the ever-changing top line. I think it’s interesting that despite the fact that many humans like familiarity, technological things change as quickly as they do. I wouldn’t mind so much if it were just an update here and there, but it’s so many things always changing.

I would say it’s just not practical to have to buy a new phone and new computer every few years. And yet that’s what we’ve created. An industry has made people totally dependent on tools (or toys as the case may be) for communication and then forces them to be constantly updating because they decided to create something new that makes everything else useless or obsolete. How about when those finicky -and expensive- tools don’t work? Or break easily? Or have a dead battery?

I think it’s fair to say most of these “too much technology for our own good” problems occur in more developed countries, which begs the question: What is the rest of the world doing? Who wants to guess what percentage of the world has internet access? There are some interesting things to consider. First, there ARE people who don’t have electricity at all, and who do not have ready access to all our technology advancements. Also, there are a good number of people who don’t use telephones, but yet a large portion of the earth has signal availability. On the other side, there are many who at least have cell phones but still do not have huge tech presence in their every day lives. (i.e. still using horse-drawn carts, etc.) There are many aspects to the digital divide and global digital divide which you can look at more on your own.

All in all, I would have to say these are actual cons of technology. Also, while I actually did research this (and not just on wiki for you naysayers out there) these are just my thoughts and should not be considered scholarly. What are your thoughts? Next week I’ll be talking about the non-tech perspective on misuses of technology.