Can We Auto-Correct Humanity?

I came across this video, and knew immediately I had to share it.  It is in spoken word form, and the message is amazing!  I have several friends that I know through technology, because of technology,  rethinking their use of technology.  They are trying to consciously reconnect with people in old school ways.  I love what they are doing, and I am purposely trying to partake in those old school ways as well. But for me it is not an issue, personally.  You see, I do love technology, to the extent I would call myself a techie.  I love electronic gadgets.  I do. However it is a love/hate relationship, because I do not love what technology does to people, or should I say, what people choose to let it do to them.  I agree, it's a CHOICE.  I have strong opinions when it comes to this.  I despise people using their cell phones in the car, talking or texting.  It boggles my mind that we are so cavalier with peoples lives including our children, and ourselves.  Actually what I should say is I despise cell phones, PERIOD. When the cell phone craze began, I was confused, is not the telephone one of the most despised things among people.  It's always ringing, why are they calling me, can't I have a moment of peace, and on and on the complaints went.  We had answering machines so we could avoid answering the phone, so we could choose who we wanted to talk to.  Then came the cell phone. Now we REALLY can't have a moments peace, even when we are outdoors.  We can be reached where ever we go.  Suddenly people are so important, that they are on their cell phone in the store, in line at the coffee shop, in a restaurant, on a picnic, at a concert, in church.   It makes no sense to me.







We know cell phones today are used for more than just talking.  They connect us to the world wide web instantly.  I get it.  Information is at our fingertips, and convenience is just a swipe away.  I get it.  I also get the safety issue.  That is why we do own a cell phone, a slider without internet access.   There are four of us in our family, and one cell phone is all we have ever had.  We used it for emergencies, like when somebody was leaving, or if we left the kids at home, or we went out of town etc.  It wasn't until my daughter graduated and went on a 6 month trip to Asia, that she purchased her own cell phone, again with no internet access.

Certainly there have been moments when we wished we could look up an address, or a phone number, or looked to see what restaurants where in the area when visiting.  But still I am glad that we have resisted.  Well most of us, eventually my daughter did get a smart phone at her cost.  And very quickly she was drawn into the world of constant distraction.  It is a bone of contention between us.  She knows absolutely no phones at the dinner table, and if she brings it out too much, I will say something.  I warned her that if she started dating a guy who took out his phone during dinner, I would scream a high pitched squeal until he put it away.  I adamantly taught the kids never to use their cell phone in the car, always pull over.  They seem to agree, but it doesn't hurt that they know if they did use it while driving, I would come unglued.

So while I don't have a smart phone, I do have an iPod, and an iPad.  Both of these rely on there being wi-fi if I want to connect to the internet.  You see, I love photography and thus iphoneography. Since I didn't have an iPhone, I had to wait until Apple finally put a real camera in their iPods, which didn't happen until 2012.  I have over 10 pages of apps on my iPod, almost all of them photography related.  I love it.  I took a year long self portraiture class that taught me a lot.  It was all online, but through it, I have made many online connections with several lovely creatives, several if not most who run in the same internet, blog, flickr, instagram, circles that I do.  It's a whole community.  In a very short time, I will be flying to the Oregon coast to hang out with several of them in a beach house.  That would not have happened without our digital connection.  So it is not the technology that is bad, but how we CHOOSE to use it, and how we ALLOW it to change us.  I digress.