My Top Ten Tech Benefits

Post on 30 October, 2019 by Dallin Malmgren

Pho­to by Karen (of course)

A cold, rainy day—trapped inside—what do we do? Obvi­ous­ly, we turn to our tech­nol­o­gy. I read a lot about the many pit­falls of tech­no­log­i­cal depen­dence, but I don’t know any­one who would give their stuff away, which got me to thinking—what good does it do me? Which, because of the way my mind works, led me to anoth­er list.

1) Almost imme­di­ate con­tact with any­one in my fam­i­ly. Bethany is in Toron­to and Nathan is in Port Townsend and Zachary is all over the place right here in Dal­las. Doesn’t mat­ter. If I have a ques­tion or a com­ment, I can get it to them instan­ta­neous­ly. That applies to my extend­ed fam­i­ly. And my friends. I think you had to have lived before such com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices exist­ed to real­ize what an incred­i­ble mir­a­cle (and bless­ing) this is.
2) By adjunct, no more long dis­tance. Peo­ple today don’t even know who Ma Bell is! Long ago, my mid­dle son lived in Berlin for sev­en years. He came home once for two weeks at Christ­mas, but he had a girl­friend in Ger­many. When I got my phone bill in Jan­u­ary, it was close to $1000. I protest­ed vig­or­ous­ly, explain­ing that my son had gone insane ; ). No dice.
3) News and infor­ma­tion. Believe it or not, I can remem­ber dri­ving to the library to find some­thing out. And way more often than that, just not know­ing what­ev­er I was won­der­ing about. Now I can find out just about any­thing that cross­es my mind while I’m sit­ting in this chair. Anoth­er miracle.
4) Enter­tain­ment options. We used to have three major net­works and, in met­ro­pol­i­tan areas, a local sta­tion or two. Now we have almost unlim­it­ed options. And with skill you can com­plete­ly avoid the com­mer­cials! Movies? The at-home expe­ri­ence is in many ways (com­fort, con­ve­nience, selec­tion) supe­ri­or to the moviehouse expe­ri­ence. I’m sur­prised the­aters haven’t gone out of busi­ness. They will.
5) Again by adjunct, music stream­ing ser­vices. We can lis­ten to just about any­thing, from way back in our past to what came out today. At my most musi­cal­ly zeal­ous age, I prob­a­bly didn’t buy more than two albums a month (not count­ing garage sales, thrift stores and flea mar­kets). For the same cost, I can lis­ten to every­thing. And no stor­age hassles.
6) The GPS. I add this one for my wife (although, in fair­ness, I use it all the time too). She was not gift­ed with a sharp sense of direc­tion. But she can where she wants when she wants—and we no longer have to pull over and ask some stranger for direc­tions (geez, I used to hate that!).
7) Alexa and Siri. Why do I feel guilty about admit­ting this one? I guess because both gals make me feel so lazy! I no longer set an alarm, or reach for a dic­tio­nary, or lis­ten to a weath­er fore­cast, or look up a score or sta­tis­tic or sched­ule, or make a bet with­out find­ing out imme­di­ate­ly if I’ve won or lost it. They make every­thing easier.
8) Tex­ting. In the way back when, I used to tell my stu­dents that even if I won the lot­tery, I would nev­er own a cell phone…until I got one. Then I told them, alright, it’s con­ve­nient, but I promise you I will nev­er text. Haha…now it’s my pre­ferred method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I’ve nev­er been much of a phone talker—but it is so great to get your ques­tion answered or your sched­ule con­firmed or your opin­ion stat­ed with­out going through the rig­ma­role of a conversation.
9) Fan­ta­sy sports. I am not a video game play­er. Nev­er have been, nev­er will be. But this is not a holi­er-than-thou state­ment. I have my own brand of time-wast­ing. I come from a fam­i­ly of sports fans (at least on the male side). Fan­ta­sy just ratch­ets up the lev­el of engage­ment. I’m not defend­ing it—I’m just say­ing it’s fun.
10) Face­book. Like every­one, I get ambiva­lent about this one. But so many peo­ple have passed through my life, like for­mer stu­dents and col­leagues, and friends from Upper Dar­by, and Ste. Genevieve, and Schertz, and the Ban­dit, and even­tu­al­ly Frisco—it has been a plea­sure to hear a word from them and get a glimpse into their lives as they go on—even if it’s not a very in-depth view.
11) Yeah, I added one: $. It might not seem like it, with the cost of cell phones and lap­tops and note­books and all the para­pher­na­lia and all the ser­vices that go with them. But take anoth­er look at my list…if time is mon­ey and mon­ey is mon­ey, you are get­ting a boat­load for what you pay.

Addi­tion: Before Karen even read it, she asked me where I put Pho­tos on my list—and I for­got them! (I think that over 50% of her tech­no­log­i­cal involve­ment has to do with pho­tos.) And I have to admit, pho­tog­ra­phy has been com­plete­ly trans­formed by tech­nol­o­gy, and in a peo­ple acces­si­ble way that is good for us all. So that’s #12.

Although I too rail about the dehu­man­iz­ing effect and sense of iso­la­tion and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of vio­lence and pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with self that our tech­no­log­i­cal toys can engen­der, my list makes me real­ize they can be pret­ty won­der­ful too. I sup­pose it is up to us to be wise in how we use them.

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