Technology is a weird concept
– we’re constantly getting faster and faster and smaller and
smaller. I’ve always been completely enthralled with the newest,
fastest innovation to hit the market.
Technology is a weird concept – we’re constantly getting faster and faster and smaller and smaller. I’ve always been completely enthralled with the newest, fastest innovation to hit the market.
I’ve been using the Internet since I was 15 years old, talking to people on other sides of the world. Soon came FTP sites, and I began downloading music and files directly from another person’s computer. We went from an external 14.4K modem to and internal 56K modem to high-speed DSL in my house. In college, I had my brothers’ computers networked with mine so we could share files and print to the same printer.
I’ve always loved advances in information technology – that was until last week when I found I couldn’t escape it.
I’ve been a mess since the middle of last week when the first bombs fell upon Baghdad. Now, instead the usual excitements of spring, I’ve found myself waking up on the couch with CNN on the television screen at 4 a.m. feeling groggy. In the morning, instead of leaving for work, I’m standing with the TV controller in my hand, not letting myself get away from the action. And when I get into the office, I can’t help but constantly hit the refresh button on my Web browser, which has its homepage set to CNN.com, and reading anything I can about the war in Iraq.
To me, the information can’t come fast enough. Here we are in a war where the journalists are reporting live during gunfights, but it isn’t enough information for me and it isn’t fast enough. I have to know everything and I have to know it as soon as it happens.
And, for once, I’m finding that this access to information has become a health threat. I can’t escape my addiction to finding out anything and everything up-to-the-minute. I know that I’m not the only one who hasn’t been able to get themselves to change the channel, to turn off the television or to just get away from the war in Iraq for a little while. But as frightening and confusing as war can be, it’s important that we go about our daily lives.
And I’ve tried to.
I’ve been trying to put hours into looking at statistics for my fantasy baseball team, a game I’ve never played before. The season hasn’t even begun yet and I’ve already changed out half of the players I drafted just a week ago. And more trades and free agent pickups are on the way. but the news was just a few mouse clicks away.
I’ve even spent time at the park walking around where there are no television sets, no computers, no radios. I’ve also tried to immerse myself in the NCAA tournament, only to find that CBS break in with war coverage during every other commercial break. And after every activity, I head right back to whatever outlet I can to find out just what is going on on the other side of the world.
Before I went to bed last Friday night after staring at CNN on TV for too many hours, I crawled into bed only to find myself not only not able to sleep. My mind raced with thoughts of the parents of soldiers I have talked to prior to the war and about the people I grew up with that could in one way or another be involved in the fighting in the Middle East.
As I continue to hear over and over again that this is just the beginning of the war and that the real fighting, the real losses and the real effects of the war will be seen in the coming days when soldiers make their move on the Iraqi capital and meet Saddam’s Elite Republican Guard, I can only imagine myself spending more nights on the couch and losing more sleep.
But as I watched on the TV screen and saw the bombs rain down on Baghdad and imagined the confused citizens of the country not knowing what or who to believe, I realized one thing: I may not by able to escape from all my sources of information, but at least I have them. While I’m complaining that I can’t get away from war news, they aren’t getting any at all – and what they do hear may not even be the truth.
I guess maybe I don’t know how lucky I am.
