The Internet - Good or Evil

For many years I wouldn't turn on a computer more than once a month or so. These days, with my job, I am on the computer everyday of the work week, I try not to even check emails on the weekends. I worked in youth recreation and then sold books for many years, I didn't have any need to hook up to the computer everyday.

Today we send an email to the person down the hall from us at work rather than getting up off the desk chair and sticking your head in their door to just tell them. Even if you speak with someone on the telephone you ask them to drop you an email just to remind you of your telephone conversation or of a task to take care of. When I have someone ask me to send them an email reminder I just feel like I have been told that they are not listening to me and that I am unimportant I am just wasting everyone's time.

Kids today have been wired to the internet since birth it seems. I have seen kids as young as five years old with their own cell phones. Driving home from work I see kids riding their bicycles through the neighborhood with no hands because they are texting on their cell phones. Kids are taught how to work computers in elementary school, I took keyboarding in high school, we didn't have computer lab back then.

I do think that computers and the internet are a great tool and resource I just don't like to see people disappear into them. I get on the internet and I can easily find myself pulling away from the room that I am sitting in with every keystroke I make. I make myself look up to remember that I am still sitting at my dinner room table with my pups sleeping at my feet.

For awhile I got swallowed up in Facebook, checking it everyday, seeing what my friends are up to so far away, checking in on my farmville farm. I do love to checkout pictures that my friends and family put up, but I started to live for Facebook not document my life on Facebook.

The one good thing that has come out of it is that I am getting to know the family that I didn't meet until I was an adult. Like many families these days my parents didn't share well so I didn't met my bio dad until I was in my twenties, at which time I also met three sisters, two brothers, a whole bunch of cousins, a couple of uncles and a grandad. It was overwhelming to say the least. We all found it hard to get to know each other as family after so much time has past. With the internet and Facebook we can write letters and notes to each other, we can share our art and writings and thoughts in a way that is open and not as invasive to lives that we are living now.

My brother L and I chat on Facebook often, we take about work and people and family, I call him my brother and he calls me sister, it feels right and is a great line of open communication for us. We live thousands of miles away but they are still my family. My bio dad is very opinionated about everything so it is nice that I don't have to open up and read his emails and song files until I am home and in the right mood. My sisters are a little harder to get to know but I just open the door and wait for them to say hello.

My uncles live all over the US and Canada (there are seven uncles and one aunt on my bio dad's side), growing up I heard stories about most of them but my mother only new them in high school. I have been chatting and trading photos with them through email for a couple of years now and can know see where I got some of my personality traits from. Without having the great tool of the internet I most likely wouldn't even be able to tell my uncles apart or be able to get closer to my family.

Technology break a community apart when people blindly look elsewhere for support or it can bring a family together through communication and support. It is up to each one of us to use it wisely, talk to the people you are having dinner with, text a love one that you are on your way home, chat with your brother to get to know him, but still remember to stop and look around you at the beautiful planet you live on.