Thursday, June 12, 2008

The mother of invention... Apple?

June 12, 2008 - Inventions have created all kinds of free time. Free time has created more gadgets. So now, we fill our free time with even more gadgets. There are gadgets we play with in public. Toys we play with in a group. Games we play long distance, and gadgets we play with alone. But what did we fill time with before the Palm Pilot, cell phone, iPhone, iPod, laptop, XBox, XBox Live, Tom Tom, and iBods? We used day timers, little black books, wrote letters, met face to face, listened to live music, kept a notebook, played bored games and postal chess, got lost, used maps... There were no blogs. There was the Diary.

I imagine that if I had to take pen to paper, I would never be putting my thoughts together daily like this. (See June 8th) But many people still write in a diary at the end of the day, and many more did in the past. Today is Diary Day in honour of Ann Frank's birthday. Ann Frank wrote a diary of her life during the holocaust. It was a powerful look in to the thoughts and experiences of life during a time of horror. The Diary of Ann Frank is a classic, and yet, it was written as a personal daily journey. Though at the end of the day I often have musings and reflection, I don't know that I could sit to write my thoughts.

Many of the thoughts that roll around on the gerbil wheel on my mind are such that I wouldn't want them captured in a written record. They are not deep or universal enough to keep a reader past January 4th. I wonder what will come of this blog in the future. Will it become good chat up material? Will it lead to drinks and post-drinks? Will it have fulfilled it's universal goals and fade in to the sunset? Will it become a classic - The Diary of a Mad Woman? Some Blogs are thoughtful and smart. Some are funny and challenging. This one is neither, but in the day and age of the Internet and the Blog, we are all writing our thoughts and musings.

The Internet has made us all columnists and writers, graphic artists and music thieves. The cell phone has given us all an invisible electronic leash, and all the advances in technology has given us the platform for even more technology. I've heard that Necessity is the Mother of Invention. I often thought it was laziness that was the mother of invention. After seeing all the great new gadgets and machines around us, I'm starting to think spare-time (boredom) is more accurate. On Machine Day, we should celebrate the inventions of all the machines and gadgets that have come before us, with us, and in to the future. Play with your toys. Personally, I now have t0o many gadgets, and not enough time to use them all. Someone should invent a way to slow down time.

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