Tag: technology

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Good morning! Time to get online!

I bookmarked this article from the New York Times a few years ago and read it again on Friday night. It wasn’t the inspiration for creating the “Unplugged” category on my blog, but it was definitely a motivator to try doing it again. (The first time I actively avoided using technology happened about two years ago.)

I think it’s worth noting that it was easier for me than it would have been for Kord Campbell: I don’t own an iPad, I don’t work with computers on a daily basis and I don’t ride the subway, so I have no idea how long I’d be offline inside a tunnel. That said, it’s not like I’ve been living in a secluded cabin. There’s still a TV in the house, I’ve got a laptop on my desk and an iPhone in my pocket… technology isn’t always in front of me, but it’s almost always there.

So I decided to try to avoid it on Saturday. I decided I was only going to use my phone for my alarm and that was it! Okay, I would have used it like a regular phone, too, but that was it! Until I decided to use it for listening to music later that night, but that was it for really real that time!

The urge to get online hit me as soon as I woke up. Normally, I roll over, then delete maybe a dozen emails from various mailing lists. (Admittedly, I let myself cheat a little bit right away: I’d written someone a message on Friday night about something happening on Sunday, so I opened up my email account, read that single reply, then turned off my phone again.)

In the early afternoon, our immediate family was meeting at a restaurant to celebrate several birthdays at once, so that helped pull me away from the laptop and television. It also helped pull me away from my phone as well because I accidentally left it on my bed before we took off, but the urge to use it was still there in force.

During the course of the meal, people were showing off pictures on their phones, looking for random information on the Internet… I wanted to pull out my phone for the same reason. I had some cool pictures I’d taken, there was something I wanted to look up during a conversation, but I couldn’t. My phone wasn’t there, but I wanted it. “Shawn wants the Precious, but the nasty little hobbitses left it at home.”

…

Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad.

When I got home, I grabbed my phone, opened it up and saw that I hadn’t missed any calls. Didn’t check my email or Twitter, just closed it and put it in my pocket. Time to find something else to do.

So I started cleaning house. Or at least my small part of it. I’ve had way too much junk mail building up into little piles (that have slowly turned into big piles) over many months. After getting the space heater and humidifier out of my room—I’m hoping we’re finally done with blizzards here in Minnesota this spring—I plugged in my paper shredder and started clearing out some of those piles. I’d pull up a handful of old credit card offers, tear off the address labels, shred those, then dump the rest into a bag for recycling. Again. And again. And again.

It started getting tedious pretty quickly: tear, shred, dump. That’s when I cheated a second time by turning on some music. It helped keep my brain occupied, I could bob my head to the beat and occasionally sing along a little bit. (Yes, I can sing. No, I don’t do karaoke, so don’t bother asking.) It helped the time pass more quickly.

I was starting to feel burned out after a couple hours of being productive, so when the clock struck midnight? I turned into an electric pumpkin. Time to delete emails, scroll through my Twitter feed and play around on Facebook for a while.

Even though my “electronic fast” only lasted a day, I think it was worth it, if only as a reminder to step back once in a while. Focus less on online distractions and more on people. Get away from the TV and log off Facebook; enjoy spending time with friends and family. PUT THE SMARTPHONE DOWN. Unless someone’s actually calling you. Then it’s okay to answer the siren song of technology.

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LALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

Today before class was nice. I got to school early to talk with the director of the MBA program, then spent the next hour in a study room that’s relatively quiet. Sometimes I’m there by myself, sometimes there are a handful of other people, sometimes it’s a group talking about a presentation—whatever the case might be, it’s usually a pretty peaceful place to study. Or in this case, type on my computer.

My computer was important because during the course of that hour, I’m pretty sure someone came into the room who I didn’t want to talk to for reasons I ain’t gonna tell you. He said hi to a another person in the room and it sounded like his accent, but I kept staring at the screen and typing, not looking up to see if it was him.

How could I ignore them without seeming rude? Headphones. I had them plugged into my phone so I could listen to music while typing. (Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about listening to the same songs over and over again—I’ve got about 4 1/2 days worth of mp3 files in there.) So I kept my headphones on and kept typing intently. Did I know he was there? Yes. Did he know I knew he was there? Nope!

The ability to isolate ourselves into little bubbles via the use of technology may not be a good thing. Being in a room where everyone is plugged into mp3 players or staring at their smart phones… it’s a little disconcerting, given that people in that situation would have had to interact with each other just a few years ago.

In this case, though, thank goodness for technology bubbles. It helped me avoid talking to the guy since he left the room before I looked up from the screen (about half an hour later) and I got to listen to music at the same time. Music is awesome. Definitely better than listening to people semi-whispering about their presentation for class in an hour.

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Everything on the screen looks so tiny…

My other Cyber Monday gift to myself (not the new laptop battery) arrived via UPS today: a new 22″ widescreen monitor that I can hook up to my laptop. I’ve got a mouse and keyboard I can connect to it via USB ports, so once I get used to using this keyboard (which is wider, the keys feel different, etc.), I should be able to play around with my computer at my desk instead of sitting in bed. Not to say that I won’t use it in bed anymore, but I might be able to spend more time sitting upright and not slouching according to doctor’s orders. He’d be so proud of me right now.

Aside from the keyboard and mouse, though, there’s one thing that’ll take some getting used to: everything is really tiny. It’s probably because the resolution on this new monitor is a lot better than the laptop, but things that used to fill up most of the screen now use a very small portion of it. When checking my email, I used to have to scroll down to see the last few messages. Now there’s about three inches of white space at the bottom. The icons on my desktop were organized according to functionality: web browsers here, antivirus and maintenance programs there… it looked very organized. Said organization is now officially shot to hell. And if I decide to change things around on the new monitor, everything will be all screwed up when I go back to using the laptop on its own.

But the bigger question here is WHY AM I COMPLAINING? This thing is awesome! I’m hoping it’ll show movies and YouTube videos that fill up the entire screen, but even if it doesn’t, this thing is still pretty awesome. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to start getting used to this different keyboard. (It’s been around for a while, so I think it’s safe to complain about it after so long.)

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Coordinating calendars: CHECK!

I rely on Google Calendar on my laptop to keep my schedule organized. I use Google Chrome as a web browser (because Internet Explorer sucks donkey balls) and added the extension “Checker Plus for Google Calendar”. Basically, it shows a little calendar at the top of the screen with the time of the next thing on my schedule. Since I’ve got a meeting at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon, it currently shows 4:30 in gray. Last night when I went to bed, there was a 6:00 in gray because I was getting together with some friends for dinner tonight.

That was a problem. Yesterday morning, I received two phone calls: one from the hair stylist and one from the chiropractor, both to let me know about my appointments today. I like to keep the little appointment cards handy, but as an additional reminder, I put those times into my phone right after hanging up.

The problem? Those events never appeared on Google Calendar.

The result? I showed up for my haircut an hour early this morning. (I went to bed thinking it was 10:00 instead of 11:00 for some reason.)

I went home for about forty minutes to research how to coordinate my phone and my laptop properly. Dates and times could transfer from the laptop to the phone, but that was it. Nothing from phone to laptop. When it was actually time for my haircut, I headed back to make my head look spiffier, then came home again for another round of research. Thankfully, I eventually found an online forum where Groovy123 provided the answer I needed.

Apparently, my phone’s main connection was with Yahoo Calendar. It could accept calendar entries from any source I wanted, but only send out information to one. In this case, it was sending to Yahoo Calendar, which I’d never even heard of before, let alone used. I made some changes to properly connect the phone to Google Calendar and a minute later, a blue 2:00 appeared on my laptop to remind me about my appointment at the chiropractor. Thus, I showed up to the chiropractor an hour early. Hey, wait a second… minute… hour…

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Save as C:\Brain\Memory

The sun was shining. The temperature was 66. The outdoors were calling me.

I went for a walk this afternoon, probably the last walk of the year with cold weather coming in, so I wanted to take my time and enjoy it. It was bright and sunny, a good day to head down to the beach and back—about a two-mile round trip—and warm enough that I skipped my jacket and headed straight out the door.

As I walked down the driveway to the road, it occurred to me that there was one other result of my going for a walk: I was escaping the constant presence of technology around me. I had my phone in my pocket, but my laptop, music, the Internet… everything else was left sitting in my room. I figured it could wait for me until I got back.

There was a lot more than just technology outside. Sure, there were cars driving by and the noisy whine of leaf blowers, but I could also hear the chirping of birds and rustling of fallen leaves blown by the wind. People riding their bikes and walking their dogs. The warmth of the sun and coolness of the breeze. As I walked, I tried to relax my mind and just absorb everything that was happening around me as opposed to my regularly-scheduled staring at a computer screen for hours at a time.

When I finally got to the beach, I could see small waves that were blowing across the lake, pushing everything toward shore to my left. Part of that “everything” were ducks. Dozens upon dozens of ducks. There could have been a few hundred, but I was too busy appreciating the sight to count. I sat down at a picnic table and just watched them float. A few were straight in front of me at the beach, but most had drifted down the shoreline, very relaxed and probably enjoying the warm weather as much as I was.

Part of me was tempted to pull out my phone and take a picture. Turn on the camera app, use my fingers to zoom in closer to all the little black dots on the water, then show it to other people later. Sometimes, that temptation turns into almost a moral obligation:

Yes, I feel like everyone should be able to see this.

This afternoon, I decided that it was mine. I was going to take in the sight and I was going to remember it for myself. Screw technology. I had the option of looking at it on a tiny screen on my phone, but Nature was giving me this gift, so I was going to honor it accordingly. I sat at that table for a while, then got up and walked home.

I got inside, sat down in front of my laptop, started typing, turned on some music, eventually went upstairs and watched a basketball game on TV. Technology was indeed waiting for me when I got back. While I was walking along the road and sitting at the beach, though… that’s something only nature can provide and I’m glad I took the time today to appreciate it.

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Haters gonna hate

“I hate my cell phone.”

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that phrase. “I hate my cell phone.” “I hate this place.” “I hate it when that happens.” Really?

You can probably blame the comedian Louis CK for this blog entry because he had an interview with Conan O’Brien a few years back that felt like a slap in the face. Technology has advanced so much in our lifetimes (especially in yours, all you young ‘uns) and what do we do with it? We use it, we only sometimes enjoy it and we almost always take it for granted.

When I was in Norway with my parents, we bought a new cell phone with some prepaid minutes. We needed it to call people, find out where we were supposed to go to meet them, contact hotels, etc. It came in really handy. When we got home, I wanted to keep it for my own, but the chip inside was related to AT&T’s network. The people at Sprint wouldn’t replace the chip, so I couldn’t use it. Since I couldn’t use it, we gave it to my niece. She was 10. 10 years old with a cell phone! I would never have dreamed of having a phone at that age and some adults almost expect it these days.

Now there are iPhones and Blackberries and various other “smart phones” that you can use to download music, find restaurants, make fart noises and who knows what else. Do people using their phones to watch videos on YouTube think, “Oh my God, this is amazing!” Nope!

I see people trying to send text messages or surf the Internet and sometimes it doesn’t work right… “I hate my phone!” No, you don’t. You may be upset that it doesn’t work, but hate it? Then stop using it. Put it in a desk drawer or hide it from yourself for a month. Or a week. Or even a day. How does it feel? Are you nervous and jittery without it or do you feel better because you hate your phone? I never say it, but I almost always think it: “If you hate your phone so much, get rid of it and see how much you hate it afterward.”

Which is not to say that I’m immune. There are times when I’m doing simple stuff like taking vitamins in the morning. I’ll shake the bottle a little to get one in my hand and it’ll fall on the floor. “God, I hate that.” Really? Do I hate it? No. It’s annoying and inconvenient, but I don’t hate it. I try to make a point to correct myself whenever I think something like that. “That’s so annoying.” And I feel better.

And if you hate something as insignificant as your phone, what does that say about everything else by comparison? What do you think about the Holocaust? If someone killed your parents? Vin Diesel’s acting? “I hate my phone, but I super duper really really really hate that other stuff.”

We’ve been given a lot of gifts in this world and we tend not to notice them. They’ve become a expected part of life. When parts of our lives don’t work, that sucks. Fair enough. Does that mean we should hate them? No. There is very little out in the world that deserves hatred and we should remember to appreciate how much awesomeness is inside these tiny handheld devices that we can hold up to our ears and talk to our friends around the world. Around the world. Isn’t that amazing?

As for Vin Diesel’s acting… like I said, haters gonna hate, but sometimes it’s well-deserved.