Like many of my contemporaries in the Buster generation, I came of age watching the sitcoms of the early 70's and 80's. I would sit for hours enraptured in front of our 18-inch, black & white Magnavox television set watching my favorite shows, until my mother would force me to get up and do something more productive with my time. Shows like All in the Family, Fat Albert and The Cosby kids, Starsky & Hutch, Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Gilligan's Island, Bonanza, Good Times and Sanford and Son were all a regular part of the weekly diet of television programs I consumed growing up. By far, one of my all-time favorite shows was Star Trek. I absolutely loved watching Star Trek! I still remember the opening monologue: "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." I LOVED STAR TREK!
It wasn't that I was particularly scientifically astute, nor was I drawn to the show because of its outstanding graphics or special effects (even back then I thought most of the special effects were cheesy at best). I was drawn to the show for two reasons and two reasons only: 1) I had a crush on the character Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, (played by Nichelle Nichols) and 2) I thought the technology depicted on the show was out-of-this-world (no pun intended)! I used to wonder if the day would ever come where we could be "beamed" from one location to another. I would wonder as a child if the day would ever come where we would have those flip-open communication devices, called "Tricorders" on the show, so that I could talk to my friends. Could it be possible, I would often muse, to have a face-to-face conversation with a person through a television screen? I thought the technology they used on the show was totally awesome. All the flashing lights and buttons on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise kept me enthralled week in and week out.
Enter the days of modern technology. Blogs, wikis, emailing, you tubing, facebooking, texting, tweeting, Skyping, and digital multimedia. The information age is here! The days of digital dominance are upon us. Many of the gadgets and gizmos that were but fantasy props on the original Star Trek series are real-life devices and conveniences today. Although I'm not sure if we can "energize" people and beam them from one location to another just yet, very few of us can argue with the fact that we have indeed entered a bold new world of digital device dependency that raises many questions about the role of technology in our everyday lives. Like the proverbial fly that lands on the fly paper and declares, "My fly paper!", and the fly paper in turn responds, "My fly!", likewise, of late, I've been inspired to ask the question: do we have technology or does technology have us?
I'm no doomsday prophet when it comes to technology, I don't believe we can or should lay all the ills of society on the advent of Facebook, Linkedin, Skype, the IPhone,or Twitter, but I do believe we must constantly evaluate the proper place of technology in our society. We should have the technology, the technology should not have us! If technology can assist us in our efforts to live longer, happier, and more purposeful and fulfilling lives, then I'm all for it. If, on the other hand, we become so addicted to technology that it draws us away from God, family, friends and ultimately from ourselves, then we're in serious trouble. We must critically examine how technology should be used and not lose sight on the things in life that are truly important. My two cents is that technology should be used as a tool that makes life better and it should never become a tyrant that redefines who we are or enslaves us to the technology itself.
Life was tough before the modern digital explosion. Now we have the internet with hundreds of thousands of virtual places to travel to, we have people to text and email, videos to upload, online profiles to update, new friend requests to approve or deny, wikis to contribute to and new blog posts to post (like this post here). There's nothing necessarily wrong with all of that, as long as we remember that life doesn't consist in the abundance of technology we possess, life is about relationships...with God, with others, and with ourselves. If technology can't help us with our relationships, then I say, throw out the Skype, email, tweets and texts, and stop by for a hot cup of coffee and conversation, face-to-face.
