I’m winding down nearly a week of being 100% disconnected. I had no cellphone, no Internet Tablet, no laptop. No other internet access of any kind, for nearly 7 full days. I took the opportunity to take a look at how the internet and technology might be enriching and enabling my life, and possibly ways in which it actually inhibits my life.
If you’ve known me for a while, or have been reading Symbian-Guru long, you’ll know that I firmly believe that technology should do just that – enrich and enable our real lives. It shouldn’t get in the way or slow us down, but rather make it easier and more convenient to actually live. During the flight home, I had a chance to reflect on this in my own usage.
In entertainment, I can easily say that My Nokia N95 and N810 Internet Tablet both completely enrich my life. I have a 6GB microSD card in my N95 that allows me to store plenty of music, and a few different capacity cards for my N810. This way, I always have music at my fingertips, whether I have service or not.
In remembering things, my N95 is able to fill in as a digital camera when needed, and does the job beautifully. I can easily say that in this regard, the N95 enriches and enables my life. The N810′s webcam sucks in this regard, but it’s also not designed to do that, so it’s even.
In lightening my load, this duo rocks my face off. I typed this in the plane, on the N810 with the aid of my iGo Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard, with music pumping out of my N95 through my earphones. Being a blogger, that means I’m able to work from literally anywhere, with ease.
So where does all this technology begin to interrupt and disable real life? When I let it, of course. When I look up, sitting at the restaurant in the Cancun airport and both Christina and I are face-deep in our Internet Tablets, with not a word being spoken. When I see people on the beach, with the beautiful turquoise Carribbean in front of them and they’re buried in their BlackBerries.
Thus, I suppose you could say my little observation resulted in deciding that technology can only enrich and enable our real lives if we let it, and control it. What about you? Is your technology enriching and enabling your real life?
