Pages

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Creative people and technology

Oh, technology, such a delight. When it works. And usually it does.

I love, adore, rejoice in living in the 21st Century.

Why? This last week my dishwasher broke. Now, I know how to wash dishes by hand. Easy. Simple. Quick? NO. Dishwashing by hand takes time and energy. Quite a bit more than using a dishwasher.

Time and energy that I could use creating, writing, playing. Now, my Buddhist teachings would gently suggest I dish wash in the moment and learn the lesson there. Sometimes I have done that. It helps. I'm too caught in illusion to do it every time, for all those dishes.

So here's to the modern life!

What's your favorite bit of modernity?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

My last post was eaten by the Internet Gods. Let's see if this one survives.

My laptop. It's how I keep in touch with my friends all over the world, keep up on what little news I do read, write my books, play games. I panic when it won't start, because this particular one is a lemon and I know someday it's going to lose everything I have saved so carefully on it (I back up religiously as a result).

I can't imagine going back to an electric typewriter and correction sheets - or watching football on a Saturday afternoon and not surfing at the same time.

Microwaves, cell phones, iPods - things we can't live without now. I wonder what the next ten years hold?

Conda Douglas said...

Yeah, I'd be lost too without my laptop. Sorry yours is a lemon. At least you're in the habit of backing up all the time. I get lazy with that, and know I'll regret any sloth.

Did you ever read that story that the computer generation doesn't know that "cut and paste" used to be a physical reality? I don't miss that, at all.

Nancy P said...

Our dishwasher bit the dust last week, too. Mercury is retrograde, you know. :)

Laptop!

Anonymous said...

No kidding! Wite Out (different colors for different carbons), correcting typewriters, erasable typewriter paper. Having to retype an entire page when you made a mistake.

I use pen and paper sometimes when I write - it makes me more judicious with my words, since I can't just type and delete and type again. But boy, I'm glad I don't have to work that way all of the time any more!

I found one of the Selectric font balls in a closet last year, and showed it to my coworkers (who are all under 30) - none of them knew what it was. :-)

Conda Douglas said...

Oh boy, Beth, I'd forgotten about Wite out coming in different colors! And your mention of Selectric balls--remember how hard it was to realign the paper after you had wited out?

And unfortunately, Nancy, an astrologist friend of mine says Mercury is in retrograde for the rest of the month!