I spent 48 hours away from the computer. It wasn’t anything planned. I was out yesterday, and didn’t really have the time to be on the computer. It felt pretty good. I never really thought about it, but we spend an inordinate amount of time doing the keyboard/monitor combo routine. I would actually log off my computer at work, and log on to my computer at home. Fortunately, teaching is a very interpersonal profession, where I would say that the majority of time is spent having human contact. But that majority is rapidly becoming the minority. In my short eight years in the classroom, computer knowledge and use has changed from being a luxury to a necessity. Remember when using a computer was strictly recreational? It wasn’t so long ago.

I’m looking back to the year 2000. We’ll say it’s early summer. I just finished college, and I’m still making sandwiches at Schlotzsky’s. That was, and probably forever will be, my last computerless job. Sure, there were computer-like devices that I dealt with, but no actual computer being used to generate reports, create new documents, or research information and trends. in actuality, it really should have been a computer using job. Most restaurants by this time used computers for inventory at the very least. Jim, the owner, was computershy-and that’s putting it mildly. It made my job easier, since I just wrote out reports and did a simple monthly inventory. Life was refreshingly uncomplicated.

Computers are so much a part of our day to day lives now. I still have a few friends who have avoided the technological revolution, John Aitkens and Donnie come to mind (I can print their real names because they’ll never know). I think about the old days when we used dial up from AOL. Chatting was big. I would sit at my desk chatting away while listening to tracks stolen, not purchased, from Napster and drinking beer. Internet porn was still exciting, not just some crap that keeps showing up when you don’t want it. It took like two minutes for a picture to download from an email. Floppy discs were actually useful.

But that was the past. We now have access to the entire would at our fingertips. I would say it’s more convenient than scary. And underappreciated. Twenty years ago, there was no mapquest. You couldn’t buy tickets without standing in line. Restaurants did not have their menus posted so you could know what you were going to order before you even left the house. It really was a different world. A world I miss from time to time.

However, the reality is that there is no way I could live without my computer today. It has embedded itself a member of the family, almost like the family dog, only less affectionate. Our desktop is on its last leg, but we’re holding on to it. There’s an attachment there. I don’t want to “train” a new computer to know my preferences. Every picture I’ve taken with my wife is held here. I have work files, resumes and even poems; all my memories sitting here beside me, just waiting for me to need them. I can tell my computer my greatest secrets, and it will share them with the world.  Just like your friends.

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