I Finally Made Friends! (the Wonders of Technology…)

Well, sort of. This is what I used to take my new profile pictures:

My awesome fourth generation IPod Touch. It's white, which happens to be one of my favorite colors.

And this is the guy who I will bring along with me to social gatherings in which I will feel inclined to sit in a corner and read:

So I finally own a Kindle... I think my father owns about five of them.

And this is the interior of my new best friend. Breathtaking, I know.

Both of these I received as late Christmas gifts from my brother and father respectively, and of course I really appreciate them. My family is very technology-oriented, another aspect in which I am the black sheep – beyond Word and the internet, I am lost.

Anyway, these two devices are seriously becoming like close friends to me… not like I would know what having friends feels like. I’ve been using a first generation IPod Touch for three years and this new one has a bunch of amazing features such as a camera, a built-in speaker, and many other amenities that could eat up one’s free time if not handled responsively. I take it to the gym with me, I use it as a dictionary, heck, I even took the time to encase it in an awesome… case.

It's protected like the Mona Lisa. Okay, not really. But close enough.

As for the Kindle, I’ve been resisting its charm constantly for quite some time. I’m a fan of tangible books – books that I can hold in my hands and flip their pages, books that I can annotate with a real pencil or mark with a real sticky note, books that I can give to my friends so that they too can revel in reading delight.

Yet, when my father gave me the Kindle as a gift, I thought to myself, what the heck. It’s convenient in that it can carry thousands of books, is small enough to take with me to many places, and has useful features such as a built-in dictionary and categories for me to organize my books. While reading on the Kindle may not measure up to holding an actual book in my hands, it’s not a device that I would disparage, because the Kindle actually promotes reading, which I appreciate.

I suppose this is a good time to share my thoughts about technology. We as humans are naturally inclined to love things that lessen our workload, and though we can groan and bemoan how technology is becoming so prevalent in society, we do in fact gravitate toward these devices no matter how lazy they make us look. Obviously there’s a problem when kids are spending their time playing video games instead of reading or going outside, but, like almost all things in life, balance is key. Parents should model positive behavior that blends benefiting from the advantages of technology and doing things the old-fashioned way so that one can build character.

Though now that I think of it, if it weren’t for technology, I wouldn’t be writing this right now. Nor would I even have a blog, or a Facebook, or an email account… but then again, with that extra time I could actually live my life and make real friends go outside or sleep at normal hours. Pros and cons, pros and cons…

What do you think of technology? Did you get anything similar to what I got for Christmas? I like how I intended this post to be purely personal, yet it became a musing on technology. I suppose that’s what happens when I write these things at midnight. I hope everyone is having a splendid New Years Eve! Also, for those who don’t follow me on twitter, I’ve updated my “about me” section if you want to check it out.