So I'm sitting here typing this on Notepad as my office's network succumbed to a viral infection for the second day running. In all my years here, this isn't the first time either. Everytime it happens, I realise our constant dependency on technology. And it's not just the internet I'm talking about, it's everything - from mobile phones that can do your laundry for you to remotes that turn off your table lamp and flush your toilet.

 

I can't remember the last time I sat at a Starbucks joint and not see someone sipping a latte while getting his/her eyes radiated by their laptop. For some reason, many of these people always sit alone, perhaps hoping for someone to come along and buy them another latte and hopefully dinner in the process. All along I thought Starbucks was a place to meet a blind date or get together with your buds and find out who's getting married next year. Then again you could do that sitting alone with a laptop and latte through a miracle called instant messaging, or IM as we techno geeks like to call it. "I'm already at Starbucks...downing my 18th latte...I'm feeling blue so I'm in a blue shirt." And the blind date is at another Starbucks the other side of town tapping away at her O2 PDA, "I've been here for an hour already but I don't see you." Communication breakdown? Definitely.

 

Last Saturday I was at the comic shop and the lady running the shop was telling me her 9 year old daughter has been pestering her for a mobile phone because her classmates each have one. I was thinking like "When I was 9, I was just learning to use the damn payphone cos I was finally tall enough to reach the bloody coin slot!" Now parents are giving their kids camera phones so that they can take videos of their classmates slapping the crap out of each other and post it on YouTube. Next thing you know, technology has condemned some kid to expulsion from school and life as a pirated DVD peddler.

 

Sometimes technology borders on the ridiculous. Couple of years back, I saw a CDROM drive that came with a remote. It's like the manufacturer expects you to sit in a couch with a wireless keyboard and mouse 6 feet away from the CPU and have a maid standing by to change CDs for you. Because if you were within reach of the CDROM drive you'd be wasting the remote that came with it.

 

But don't get me wrong. I don't despise technology. It's a part of all our lives. I doubt I'll go overboard if I meet a friend carrying a mobile phone that triples as a DSLR camera and mobile computer. But yea, I'm grateful for laptops that let me type a simple blog post and internet that lets me post it up. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why I can log into my blog but not IM. So much for technology.