I grew up quite skeptical of technology. We have the ability to see any of the knowledge anyone has ever cared to record on our little pocket-sized magic screens at any point in time. My parents – especially my dad – were unimpressed by this ability. (Although, I wonder if they were indeed impressed… too impressed, and felt they could not control it… and are thus as skeptical as they are.)

My parent’s being mildly adverse to technology meant that I grew up without certain things that my generation would have considered normal.

Coming home from school and having a snack while watching cartoons? Nope. Playing Minecraft with dad? Nope, although I genuinely wish this could have been a part of my childhood, and am furiously making up for it now. Family movie nights? Not unless it was a movie worth watching (provided that we already owned it on DVD).

List of my core childhood movies:

• The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry
• Love Comes Softly – my eight-year-old brain decided that this (Clark’s character) was how all men worth my time had to act
• Air Buddies

Nowadays, I’m a lot better versed in technology than when I grew up. I’m making up for lost childhood moments by watching Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Sound of Music, and all of those Disney movies that I’ve never seen.

However, I tend to be a bit critical. Is it really good for our psyches to be able to “see any of the knowledge anyone has ever cared to record on our little pocket-sized magic screens at any point in time”? Is it really good for us to constantly be entertained? As a generation (and as a society), I’m sure this will have lasting negative effects.

I recently listened to a very good podcast about technology, specifically AI. One of the people featured on this podcast mentioned how he takes a yearly rest from all forms of technology for the whole month of August.

This idea intrigued me, not just because of my skeptical roots, but also because of a desire to be addicted to technology as little as possible, and because I think it would be very emotionally healthy to simply be for a whole month. This would be extremely difficult to pull off, but could I do it, I think it might be extremely rewarding.

What do you think? How would you go about this, if you were going to go a whole month with as little technology as possible? Do you think there are some technologies that would be impossible to give up?

Bernice