Comments on: Get Lost http://www.tedconover.com/2010/01/get-lost/ Web site for Ted Conover, Author Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:34:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: John http://www.tedconover.com/2010/01/get-lost/comment-page-1/#comment-98 John Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:47:44 +0000 http://www.tedconover.stevemotzenbecker.com/?p=337#comment-98 This may be a super long comment, but this article vaguely reminded me of something I wrote recently, trying to articulate some of my own reluctance to blindly get on board the revolution of "progress". In other parts of the world there is no five day forecast, and living in South America for four years, I had gotten used to that. Now I live in the US again, and it seems like since I last checked, the weatherman has gotten pretty good. With surprising accuracy we talk about weather in future tense and can decide in advance when to go to the beach and when to go to the movies; and there’s something about that that I don’t like. Sure, it’s convenient and intelligent, but so is Tivo and GPS and Facebook, but I don’t like any of those either. In the end these are all just opinions, but life should be simple and natural and focused. There are a lot of remarkable things happening right now, but it seems a lot of these innovations just over-saturate the surface, and drown everything else out in white noise. There is something I really like about waking up each morning, and without knowing what that day’s high temperature will be, going outside and going on with my life. Most of these new advances seem designed to either better control our time or to facilitate easier communication, and taken singularly it’s hard to see how that can be anything but positive, but this has quickly become a drug we have overdosed on. Our laptop or our iPhone or so many other things can now tell us when it will be nice outside, but the ironic reality is that these new innovations are keeping us inside more and more. Life is what happens when your updating your status message. Maybe its time we take a step back and turn everything off long enough to hear ourselves think. This may be a super long comment, but this article vaguely reminded me of something I wrote recently, trying to articulate some of my own reluctance to blindly get on board the revolution of “progress”.

In other parts of the world there is no five day forecast, and living in South America for four years, I had gotten used to that. Now I live in the US again, and it seems like since I last checked, the weatherman has gotten pretty good. With surprising accuracy we talk about weather in future tense and can decide in advance when to go to the beach and when to go to the movies; and there’s something about that that I don’t like.
Sure, it’s convenient and intelligent, but so is Tivo and GPS and Facebook, but I don’t like any of those either. In the end these are all just opinions, but life should be simple and natural and focused. There are a lot of remarkable things happening right now, but it seems a lot of these innovations just over-saturate the surface, and drown everything else out in white noise. There is something I really like about waking up each morning, and without knowing what that day’s high temperature will be, going outside and going on with my life.

Most of these new advances seem designed to either better control our time or to facilitate easier communication, and taken singularly it’s hard to see how that can be anything but positive, but this has quickly become a drug we have overdosed on. Our laptop or our iPhone or so many other things can now tell us when it will be nice outside, but the ironic reality is that these new innovations are keeping us inside more and more. Life is what happens when your updating your status message. Maybe its time we take a step back and turn everything off long enough to hear ourselves think.

]]>