Friday, April 16, 2010

Technological Autonomy



I've never been super techy. Honestly, I've prided myself on being able to solve most technological dilemmas by unplugging things and rebooting them. I've already mentioned that I don't even update my Facebook status, which, honestly, made Twitter seem ridiculous. Who cares what I'm doing? But my desire to not become one of those people who is perfectly content to continue to make mixed tapes instead of playlists has driven me to explore new technologies. Besides, rewinding sucks.

I had a day today where I used some very strange verbs. Verbs they don't teach you in 7th grade English class. I never had to conjugate "tweet". No one ever asked me about the infinitive "to tweet". I really never thought of saying things like, "Oh he facebooked me..." I'm sure that these are not real verbs.

I am sitting at a computer that could perfectly well stream my favorite songs through my internet radio. But instead, I am listening to my internet radio through my BluRay player and playing it on my plasma t.v. I realize that says several things about me, the girl who, until last year, did not even own a television. I think 1. that I am marrying a boy who really likes to research and purchase electronics. And 2. that the day I say that I don't need to learn how to have a video chat with my brother so he can show me the wedding invitations he and his wife designed in real time is the day that I am missing out.

I will still keep my mixed tapes, because the Subie has a tape player that is still holding on... And because they're awesome. Lots of stuff from the '90s is. But I do appreciate a good playlist, and I love reading people's status updates, so I am embracing it as much as I can. Although I swear, I just now learned what a widget is and still have no idea what a wiki is. And just the other day, I put pen to paper, licked a stamp, and dropped it in a mailbox, so there may be hope for maintaining my technological autonomy yet...

2 comments:

Ranger Bob said...

A letter in your hand is a wonderful thing.

jimmy said...

the post office is dying. they are planning on getting rid of Saturday delivery, so all the pen and paper wont work and it is killing the planet.

secondly, i have the same interest in Facebook and twitter. i play my mom in scrabble on Facebook and that is about it. wait until you find out about Linkedin.com. it is even more useless.

a wiki i a communal source of knowledge. the group is smarter than one well educated encyclopedia writer mentality. its been tested and it is about as intelligent as one educated person.

American Dialect Society voted Tweet as the word of the year for 2009.