Hope at the gas pump (and I don’t mean gas prices!)
by Vivian
Technology is everywhere these days. We don’t leave home without it.
Surely you’ve seen couples together at restaurants, busy with their own cell phones or laptops. And at a musical in San Francisco, I saw friends sitting side-by-side in their theater seats, gaming on their own Nintendo DS’s.
Are we really present with anyone, anymore?
Even if we make personal choices to leave technology at home, it’s blasted at us from all sides. I was most disappointed when the gas station I frequent chose to install TV screens at every pump. Talk about a captive audience!
Technology’s inexorable encroachment on every part of our lives seems inevitable. And yet…
One day I went to the gas station, and the TVs were gone. No one seemed to miss them.
And in my heart there is still much rejoicing every time I go to fill up my car and see the absence of gas pump TV.
If people can find it in themselves to turn back the tide of technology, even in a small way, perhaps people will find it in themselves to repent of greater things.
As the song from Godspell says, “Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways.”
What gives you hope?
Tags: gas pump tv, technology
November 17th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
I agree, Vivian,
It’s going to take will power to lay down our cell phones, Nintendos, and Blackberries and turn off our TV’s and talk to one another face to face. Maybe we could try by going without these technological machines for a length of time and see how much better we feel and how much better we connect with people. It’s too easy to be drawn into the culture and let the norm run our lives. Is it going to take a complete blackout to make us realize we can live very well without them? Even better, probably.
Thanks for the reminder to help make this a better world through discipline. Pat
November 18th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Yes. The TVs were not pleasant. Lucky’s had them in for a while too.
But, now that I think about it … they didn’t last very long.
ct
November 29th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Yeah, when I see those TVs in those kinds of places, my instinct is to look for the off button or the volume control. They can’t deliver anything that I want in those few minutes that I’m standing there, so they are just audio-visual pollution.
I’m not crazy about digital gaming devices, though I admit I’m a Solitaire addict. It’s easy to pull out my device and play when I’m in a totally boring situation (standing in line). However, I try to balance that impulse by also reading my online Bible in such occasions.
However, I see other technology differently. With social networking devices and situations (telephone, iPhone, email, Skype…), there’s often another person on the other end. One thing that gives me hope is to see the reconnections that I and my long-lost friends have with each other through these media. And once in a while, we even get together for a real-time visit, made all the more enjoyable because of the renewed online acquaintance.