Diagnosis: Technology Exhaustion
I love technology and have done so since my dad brought home our first VCR, an old Zenith player that ejected video tapes from the top of the device. In fact, I get my love of all things tech from my dad, who is the kind of person who tears things open and finds out how they work. As a kid, I did the same, often fixing many of my electronics issues in my stereo (when I had one) and other devices. Like him, I also ditch the user guide and figure things out on my own.
When I learned computing as a child, it was on an Apple II machine. For those of you who aren’t old enough to remember, that was before Windows existed and you had to boot a PC up with a boot diskette. Print Shop was the cool program to have, allowing you to first print banners in black and white on dot-matrix printers then later color! Growing up in the 80s, I was fascinated with computers and was well on my way to becoming a hardcore computer geek. Over the years, I moved away from being a hardware person and became more of a software person as Macintosh came out and released a user interface with “windows.” I never touched an actual PC that wasn’t an Apple machine until my senior year of high school. After quickly learning Windows and the PC format, I inadvertently became the tech support for my family and then for my friends. I loved helping to resolve computer problems and spent hours trying to figure things out, unlike the Geek Squad who has a reputation for blowing away systems without really doing any diagnosis. However, I gradually started to dislike fixing PC problems or even looking at them after working with PCs as my day job for years. I’m sure anyone who has had a day job that involves monitoring and fixing computers as a day job understands me.
Unfortunately, I have also noticed a byproduct that has extended itself beyond PCs: technology exhaustion.
Recently, I have been feeling like I have been bombarded with too much tech. There was a time when I loved carrying two cell phones around. I’ve mentioned this before, but I am seriously considering downsizing to just one cell phone once my contract ends with AT&T this fall. My Palm Pilot, an old yet trusty Treo 90, use to be a staple wherever I went. My handheld hasn’t left the spot on my desk in months. But it isn’t just my toys that have left me feeling mentally exhausted with technology; it’s the Internet as well.
I recently went through my RSS feeds in Thunderbird and dumped several subscriptions that I hadn’t bothered to read in a couple of months. I also deleted a few hundred unread feeds that I had yet to read, realizing that I wasn’t ever going to catch up. I have also found that administering a PHP message board I host on a fan site continues to wear on me as it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep up with the spammers. Either I find a spam-fighting add-on for it, or I’m seriously considering allowing the spam profiles to remain or shut the forum down completely. And while I think Pownce is superior to Twitter in terms of features, I don’t use the micro-blogging site that much to post updates, mainly because it’s missing text message capabilities, but also because Twitter is enough for me 99% of the time. Over the past few weeks, I thought about signing up for some new services but had second thoughts. I asked myself one simple question: do I really want something else I have to manage online? When I answered a “no” to that question, I knew that I was reaching a point of technology burnout.
Maybe it’s because I’m so busy these days, working on various projects, but I find that I want to keep things simple and my free time spent away from the PC. Whereas my spare time once consisted of exploring anything new on the Internet, I “unplug” when I finish working on a project for the day and read a good book, a pastime that I haven’t been able to enjoy as much until recently. I have decided to reclaim life back so that it isn’t so technologically consumed. I turn off both of my cell phones sometimes because I simply want to be unreachable. I only launch Trillian a few times a month to chat because I feel like I do enough communicating: this blog, Twitter, Pownce, and on both of my cell phones. While my Zune is a constant at work, I do not use it on the weekends. And you know what? It’s nice not having to deal with tech. It feels like I have swallowed the red pill and disconnected myself from the matrix for a little while. Of course, I can’t totally disconnect myself from all things tech, but a few hours or even an entire weekend away from PCs or devices is bliss these days.