The upsides to my technological holocaust

By Paul Cruse III

I feel as though I am disconnected from everyone and everything in the world. Why do I feel so alone, you ask? Because every piece of electronic hardware, that was supposed to make my life easier, has failed me. In the course of three days, my laptop’s hard drive crashed, my cell phone stopped working, my iPod died and my Xbox 360 won’t turn on. There was even a day or two that the cable in my apartment was down. It’s like all my technological things collectively decided that they had enough with me and were going on strike.

With all these things broken, I spend a lot of my free time not checking Facebook or YouTube, not chatting with people on the phone and not playing Halo 3. Since I am not preoccupied with all these distractions, I have begun to notice things that I usually overlook.

I have actually begun to live in the present instead of aimlessly walking through life, calculating all the things I have to do or calling friends to ask them what they plan on doing. I was focusing on the thing that I was doing right at that moment. I saw squirrels and birds squabble over food. I noticed that people have a tendency not to walk in straight lines; often they drift off course and have to right themselves in order to not hit oncoming students. I have even noticed that the clouds seem to sometimes move in the opposite direction of the way the wind is blowing.

Since my computer was broken, I am unable to check my e-mail at will. Very quickly, I realized that e-mail wasn’t that important to me. I used to check my e-mail every hour, between classes, only to be disappointed that people I had e-mailed the night before had not sent me a response. Before I would check my e-mails and reply to them almost instantaneously. Now that I have to wait until I am able to go to a public computer lab, the e-mails pile up. Instead of being disappointed when I would check it every hour, I am guaranteed to have three or four e-mails waiting for me. It’s like an e-mail Christmas every time I open Gmail.

Since my iPod died, I can’t walk around campus listening to my favorite tunes. I used to have my iPod provide music that was to be the soundtrack of my life. But now I am forced to listen to the sounds of nature. At first I found it eerie to listen to leaves rustle, people conversing in the distance and snow cracking under my feet as I walked. But now I have grown to appreciate all the noises I once purposely tuned out. I have found beauty in natural music of life that I once considered ambient noise.

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At the beginning of my technological holocaust, I thought my life was over. I thought I was missing out on everything. But now I see the splendor of just living in the now, instead of rushing through it to get to my next task only to rush through that one too. Like most people I used to think that I was dependent on technology but I now I see that it was a choice to be so committed to those pieces of plastic, glass and metal.

As I wait for the replacements to all the things that have broken, I’m beginning to brace myself for the inevitable multitasking that will come with their arrival. I enjoyed living the now, but that was because I had an excuse to. Now people will expect me to immediately answer their e-mails or text messages. I will succumb to the temptation that is Master Chief battling the Covenant. I will once again tune out the natural sounds of the world in exchange for the Kanye West and Alicia Keys. And though I would like to tell you more about how nice it was to live with a little less stress, appreciating life as I live it, I have to check my e-mail.