I love the way music sews together moments of living—sometimes tying those memories to people, to sensation, or merely to the first auditory glance at an exciting fringe of notes. We oft turn to those songs in hopes of recreating that frame of our life over and over again—occasionally successfully, but too frequently just replaying a memory that is never quite as organic and lush as when it first occurred.
Technology is awesome… or not?
I have a love-hate relationship with technology. On one hand, it fascinates me to no end. I’m endlessly amazed at the way in which it can bring strangers together for positive ends—whether it’s via Couchsurfing or Twitter or Crowdrise. I love the fact that something awful can happen in the lives of one of my volunteers at the studio and within minutes, via email, everyone can be notified and people come to the aid of someone they know very little outside of said yoga studio. I love the fact that we can have a global conversation about political issues such as WikiLeaks or tuition rates at schools and universities worldwide all via Twitter.
What gets me down are the anthropological and cultural consequences of technology in terms of human sociology and abstract thought. On one hand, technology and the internet have the ability to stimulate the brain and expose us to different cultures and ideas. Yet, on the other hand, the internet is becoming the primary source of information dissemination and I can’t help but feel that it simultaneously conditions us to be sheep and is entirely biased when it comes to the search providers. Technology has allowed us to become lazy in using our brains to do simple tasks such as calculate tips or find our way around an unfamiliar city using our memories from the last time we were “here”. Will we retain any of the information we pick up when researching something that interests us or will be trust the computer to be our memory for us? Will that be the future of the human brain—entirely dependent upon technology to exist and function?
