I've been looking ahead on assignments on the LIS 201 syllabus and when I saw that we had to go for 48 hours without using any technology what so ever, I was actually quite excited. I've gone a week without technology before but that was only because we were constantly active outside and camping with no electronics. I felt that this task would be easy because I haven't been social networking for the past month due to not being able to stay on task with my homework. I had asked a friend to change my passwords for Facebook and everything else that I used. It is helping right now and I am able to focus better on assignments. But this weekend was a different story.
I thought I would succeed in this "no technology" challenge. I even thought about if I should give this a try or not. But after thinking about it, I thought, "eh, why not?" I was doing well after work on Friday night until Saturday afternoon. So, I tried but unfortunately, failed. I failed because I knew that I would constantly have people texting and calling me. The urge to just pick up the phone caught me. Good thing it was important though. My family called me to talk. Later, a few friends were going to go watch a last minute movie. Of course, it was a movie I wanted to see. So, I picked up the phone and texted them only realizing later that I failed again.
Not only did I fail through using a phone to text etc...but also using my personal UW email. I was going to important email over the weekend for an interview and I had to constantly check so that I could reply ASAP. I also had to contact professors and talk about papers and schedule meetings. Avoiding my personal email was impossible to do. Luckily, I only texted and used my gmail over this weekend and did not participate in any social networking sites.
Going through this ATTEMPTED two hour experience was a good experience. Although I did not last, it caused me to think about how much I depend technology in my daily life. Not only did it cause me to think about that, but I realized that I was almost ADDICTED to technology. It was something scary to see. I think that I will slowly steer myself away from all the social networking which I have been doing it so far and will continue to. Something like this is almost impossible in our generation because we are so tied to our technologies.
1 comment:
I think saying you're addicted to technology might be a bit much. While yes, it's very possible you, like most of us, are very reliant on technology, the fact that you were very open to the idea of being disconnected indicates that you may not be addicted so much as you're just used to having it. And there's nothing wrong with that. We use technology because it helps with our day-to-day lives, and giving that up isn't as easy as it sounds.
Post a Comment