Letters in the sand....

Netbooks are brilliant. It hard to imagine that just a short time ago there was no such thing. There were no laptops, netbooks, ipad, and god know what else. I remember when I was young, my father bought our first pc. It was brilliant and I remember how amazed I was when he turned it on triumphantly. I remember the old floppy disks and all the computer had was Dos. I remember all the games I played and how my siblings and I would fight over whose turn it was. I remember my parents making me sit down for hours with a typing program so that I could learn how to touch type. For some bizarre reason my parents thought it was a important skill to have. I know they had big dreams for me and I know they didn’t expect me to do administrative work. They wanted me to become a doctor (which I didn’t do, much to their disappointment). But touch typing seemed to be a skill they thought I’d find useful. Now all my work colleagues make fun of me when they see me typing without even looking at the screen. They say I graduating from secretary school (whatever that is, do they schools for secretaries? I should check that out).

Anyway, my point is technology is amazing. If someone had told me twenty years that I would be living a life where I had two mobile phones, an ipod, a netbook and all the other gadgets I have lying around , I probably would’ve stared at them in disbelief and wondered if it was really possible.

But a part of me misses the simpler life, when I didn’t have a mobile phone that rang insistently all the time, where music was came in cd’s (because the quality on cassette tapes really sucks) and where actual books were read. There’s something peaceful about being disconnected from the world, where you can hide and not be found unless you want, where you get excited when you find that cd you’ve been looking for, where you turn the page of that exciting book and feeling the words on the paper.

There no doubt that technology has made life comfortable and simple, but there is a loss of identity in technology. There is something so special about receiving a hand written letter, one that has been written with love and care. I never receive letters anymore, only impersonal emails. I miss the letters. I miss the feel of the paper on my skin, seeing the ink and smelling its faint odor. I miss being disconnected.