My Tech

I’ve been having fun with smart light bulbs. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but fun for me. I have them in three rooms now, the living room, the kitchen, and the bedroom. I’ve even created scenes with different colors and brightness’s. They all have names and I call them by voice, there’s normal, evening, morning. Now that I think about it, I could give them fun names, like Skip, or Buster and treat them as pets.

I’m fairly certain my love of technology came from James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times and his story about his grandmother thinking electricity leaked from the plugs on the wall. I very definitely did not want to be that person when I grew old, the person who resisted change, who fought against things like the telephone and the light bulb, and didn’t understand how the world worked. I wanted to embrace the future and avoid becoming its victim.

Of course, as I’ve aged, I’ve watched contemporaries fall by the wayside, pooing-pooing computers, dismissing social media, scoffing at automotive advances such as adaptive cruise control. I try not to argue or convince. I just nod and move on. But in my mind, I know I feel good owning my technology, like a surfer might feel riding smooth and fast down the face of a big wave, exhilarated, alive, confident, on top of things. Obviously, it’s not for everyone, but it is for me, and I suppose that’s all that matters.