Technology is the boon or bane of our lives. When it works, we navigate traffic easily, pay our bills with a single click or pick up the perfect lunch we ordered from our phone. Other days, technology doesn’t work and we end up lost, don’t receive necessary emails, or our text to voice message is a garbled mess. In light of the positive and negative effects of technology, we are often better off because of it.
Communication
Communicating necessary information such as forgotten grocery items, or good news is now easy to share. Whether texting someone across town or across the country, technology makes this much easier than even 30 years ago. In addition to communicating with words through text, or our voices with a phone call, we can let our pictures speak, too. Whether through social media, email, or text, sending a picture to family or friends is immediate and requires no extra postage. The downside, of course, with our constant, easy, access to other people is that it makes our home lives blur with our work lives. This lack of separation between our work world and home life sometimes leaves us stressed out and unable to focus on the people in front of us.
Finding Our Way
It is now easier than ever to find our way in the world using GPS apps like Google or Waze. Not only can these apps tell how to get places, as well as the quickest, most efficient way. Conveniently, you can search for restaurants or gas stations along your route. You can also get reviews of local businesses to help you decide which restaurants or companies to patronize.
New Skills
Learning new skills from car repair to knitting is easier with online videos. You can search for almost any skill you want to learn and find that someone has recorded a video explaining how to do it. This is a great way to master tasks that once would require calling a repair person or taking a class. The availability of exercise videos and healthy eating websites also makes getting in shape convenient.
Home Safety and Efficiency
Technology makes our homes safer with Ring doorbells, security systems, and automated lighting. It also helps to make it more efficient with home technology products that give you remote control of appliances and HVAC systems in the home. Not interested in the price tag that comes with automating your home? Plug appliances like lights or coffee pots into wireless timers, which you can control remotely with an app. This gives you some remote control of your home without paying a lot of money.
Technology is a tool. It can make our lives easier, as tools do. As long as we remember that it is never a substitute for human interaction, this keeps technology ordered correctly in our lives.
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