About 5 a.m. the other morning I reached over and grabbed my iPhone from its resting place next to me in bed (I think there used to be a woman there). I opened my email to find three emails from Amazon.com alerting me to purchases I’d just made. One was a Loony Tunes episode of a certain Wile E. Coyote.
Stumbling through my darkened house I found my way into the living room. There on the couch wrapped in a blanket and cuddling a fluffy stuffed dog was my 7-year-old with the Kindle his grandmother had just purchased him for his birthday. I realized at that moment there was a downside to that one-click purchase feature on Amazon.
By 5:30 a.m. we’d completed a crash course on personal finance and responsibility. Thankfully, he’s a quick learn. Wish I could say the same for Wile E. Coyote.
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From useful gadget to ornamental antique -- my old cordless phone and answering machine.
This is a picture of my wall phone and answering machine. I stopped using it in 2006 and had the landline disconnected in 2008. It remains on the wall as homage to a routine that no longer exists for me. I figure if it sits up there long enough it will gently slide into the lucrative realm of antique. But probably not.
That old routine — coming home to see that little blinking light indicating I have a message ended when I got a cell phone. From then on, if anyone was looking for me during the day, they already found me. Of course, even that has changed because at this point it’s more likely they would text, instant message, Facebook or — if they must — email me. I can barely remember what it was like when I had to be home to get a call — or tethered to the wall prior to cordless phones. Go back before answering machines and you actually had to be at home within earshot of the phone at the precise time someone called to make a connection. Remember that? I don’t. It was too long ago.
Writer, blogger and poet Victor Infante and I were talking about this the other day.Victor hit on the whole subject of technology from an angle I hadn’t considered before — the experience of coming home.
Coming home always meant checking the mailbox to see if anyone had sent me a letter, open the door and the dogs would greet me, the answering machine was blinking. There was a lot waiting for me when I came home. That experience has changed. The mailbox has mostly fliers now (even my bills are paperless) and the phone is dead. My dog Indiana is 15 now and has finally realized that I actually am coming home every day and not leaving him forever each morning. Up until two years ago I’d at least eagerly turn the computer on to see if I’d gotten any emails. These days I’ve already read them on my phone as I walk from the garage to the house. Communication no longer happens at intercept points in our day like “coming home.”
Like a lot of us, I live in a world of seamless communication. Tweet, Facebook, phone, email, text or instant message me and no matter where I am (unless I’m out of cell range) you’ve got me instantly.
Does communication technology improve our lives or complicate it? The answer: Yes.
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