piatok 15. februára 2013

Prologue

Technologies influence our everyday lives more than we think. Some of us are not even aware of it. Let me tell you one short story so you could better understand.

Once upon a time, in a city called "A", there lived a man called Jeff. He had a good job and he was buying himself every new electronic gadget available. Let's take a look at his usual day.
Jeff woke up in the morning and he didn't even need to get out from bed to have smartphone with internet in his hand. He was completely impatient if anyone liked or commented on his status on facebook that he had posted last night. Waking up took Jeff half an hour, because he was checking news feed from his insomniac facebook friends. He made himself a hurried breakfast (or he did not eat anything at all) and he ran to work.
On the way, headphones played his favourite music only to discourage everybody who intended to casually speak to him.
He came to work, where he could be online at least through a mobile internet (but it could have been faster because it took a lot of time to browse photos of his friends put on facebook while he was driving to work). Meanwhile, Jeff was notified that his best friend was having birthday today, so he bought him some funny stuff in the "nearest" e-shop. Thank God he is able to pick it up today in the evening. Voice in his head said "Thank you, Internet, for saving me again" while he was looking for his cell phone again. He came back home and, instead of TV, he turned on youtube and watched "Best fail compilation of the month". He was rolling on the floor laughing not noticing that a piece of meal was rolling on the keyboard soiling between enter and right shift . Then he watched two episodes of some series on his tablet and he went to sleep. But wait! Before that, he had taken a short look on popular meme pictures from 9gag.
He put smartphone and tablet aside from his bedside. Finally he fell asleep. And when morning came and an alarm clock on his cell phone started to ring, the whole story went around.

I admit that this story is a bit excessive. But it is meant to be excessive. Because maybe the reader of this article will recognize himself in some of these lines.

This blog is not about writing bad things about technology and technological gadgets. It is about looking back to past and showing that one can also live without the newest technological stuff. Yes, it helps to improve our lives significantly, but it doesn't mean that we should end like Jeff from our story. One doesn't need to sell his kidney to get a new iPhone and reach some social status by that.

Life without gadgets was better in many ways. And that is what the main theme of this blog is about.