Addicted To Technology

While most men are obsessed with sports, I'm totally addicted to technology. I guess it's safe to call me a nerd. There's no way of denying it.

Ask my family, they'll tell you. Ever since I can remember, I've been mesmerized with new electronic gadgets and computers. From my first Compaq Presario PC in the late 80s to my Prodigy and AOL accounts in the 90s to my iMac, iPhone and iPad today - I can't break away. It leads to an interesting debate. Could we get along without it? I would say no to that. Has society lost something? I say that answer is yes.

An interesting debate came up during Thanksgiving dinner this year. With a house full of ten people all talking and eating at once, you know it's a recipe for interesting discussions. At one point, my brother and my cousin were on their phones and I was in the middle of checking something on my iPhone.

My grandmother was talking about something that we had little to no interest in. She then started complaining about our manners. The 83 year old New Yorker was absolutely right. While many of us have become texters, tweeters and web surfers, the simple conversation is really a lost art. Ignoring her was an eye opener. Do we do this all the time, even to others? I took a step back and realized not only was I being rude but its the problem with many these days. The one on one communication we all used to depend on is now secondary to e-mail or instant messages.

The same kind of thing happens to me at home. My wife could be talking to me about something and I have the phone in my hand. Although what she's saying is often times very important, I don't hear any of it. I sit with the fingers at the keyboard crafting what I obviously think is more important than what she's saying. It never is. There was one time in particular she was having a budget discussion with me and I learned of some piece of entertainment news I just HAD to Facebook about. She walked away and I didn't even know! Yeah, it's bad.

Whenever I'm out with friends, they all do it to me and it drives me crazy. I know it drives them crazy when I do it. We can be eating dinner and one of us will get a text. We quickly scurry to see what it is and feel 100 percent compelled to respond that very minute. It's almost like if we don't, we will lose a limb. That's how it's always felt for me. I do have one excuse though.

In my line of work, I need to be totally plugged in all the time. That phone can go off at any point with breaking news and I might have to swing into action. It doesn't happen too often but because of the conditioning with the job, I sometimes forget that there's downtime too. My boss tries to remind me of that, especially for weekends and vacation days. Lately, I've been keeping my phone in my home office during dinner so I can actually have a conversation with my wife and not be totally rude like so many of us are.

There's also nothing worse than someone on a cell phone talking loudly in a restaurant or even in a movie theater. These events make me really miss the old telephone booth or payphone in a designated spot.

While I love my tech toys and gadgets, I do have to realize there's a point where it becomes a major life intrusion. The young people of today especially need to be careful. I've seen teen guys and gals hanging at the mall but they're all on the phone either talking or messaging. Technology is definitely running our lives now. Lets see if we can try to tone it down.

What do you think? Does this ever happen to you? Do you agree with me?

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