Device or "de" vice

Many years back, I watched the movie Apollo 13. And I was shocked to see how primitive the technology looked. As I understand it, the computers on board the spacecraft had much less memory then our average cell phone of today. Down on earth, the "computers" that helped to run the mission had much more in common with electric typewriters then with the average lap top of today. The computers as portrayed in the movie were heavy monstrosities that were very slow and were so expensive that no one ever thought that we would have personal computers, cell phones, iPads everywhere.  So much has changed since 1969.

I have had computers for 30 years now. The changes have been immense. My first computer was an Atari 130XE. It quite amazed me. With its 128 kilobytes of Ram, it seemed so modern. Each time I wanted to make a document, I would have to load the programme in to the 5.25 inch floppy drive (that's 13.3 cm floppy drive), wait 10 minutes as I heard the programme load, then take out that disk, insert a data disk, wait a few minutes more and then finally I would get to work on my document. Then it would take another five to ten minutes to save the file once I was finished. If I wanted to use a different programme, I would have to insert another disk and wait another 10 minutes for it to boot up. Now, I complain that it takes two minutes for my computer to boot up and do everything that I need to do and that 500 billion bytes of information is not quite enough.

I know that I am a technology nerd. No I would not be able to dismantle and reconstruct a computer, but my electronic devices are part of my life. I store my photos on them. I store my music. I keep my appointments on my devices. I hardly remember anybody's telephone number anymore because they are stored in my contacts. I work from my computer. I reach an audience blog from three different continents because of my computer. I play games on my computer. Without my devices, I would feel lost.

But I was quite shocked that a tv report said that the average child spends 21 hours a week glued to their electronics. Considering there are 168 hours a week, that is 1/8 of their life. And if they sleep just 8 hours a night- that means that 21 hours out of their 112 hours of awake time is spend on games and social networking. That is just mind boggling. Parents now threaten children with loss of electronics time whereas in my day it may have been loss of tv privileges or being sent to your room.

I do not want to go back to a world where everything is done with pen and paper. Oh sure thanks to good education, I can still add, subtract, multiply and divide accurately and quickly. But it is so much easier with a machine. My handwriting has always been indecipherable and slow. Using a keyboard is so much easier. The ability to connect with others is so much easier now then it was before. But I don't think it is right to live life tethered to a machine, especially when you are young and have so much of the world to explore. Blessings