When you read this I will have travelled through Spain from Barcelona in Catalunya in the northeast down to Cortes de la Frontera in the Serrania de Ronda, Andalusia - the far south of Spain.
And for once, I won’t be checking audience stats, or seeing whether anyone has actually read this post, because I will be unplugged.
No phone. No Kindle. No laptop.
Seriously, how else do you really get away from it all? For all its wonder (complete strangers across the globe can share my innermost thoughts and personal observations) and convenience - ‘How do you make cornbread? Just let me check online… I’ll just email so-and-so …I’ll just make a bank transfer …I’ll just look at Matthew’s wedding photos …’
But it’s relentless. Because, let’s face it, we don’t just stop at the recipe, or the one post or the photo, and before we know it hours have passed and we are still caught in the fascinating labyrinth of Wiki, or sniggering at yet another video on Youtube. Then perhaps your memory dredges up a name from the past, and instead of being content with merely wondering over that person’s fate, we think: ’Oh, Becky Smith! I’ll Google her…’
Have any of you heard of post restante? This precursor to instant electronic communication is still around, but the very name smacks of a previous era.
A traveller would head off to their destination - to Spain, or Morocco, or Thailand - but not before she had made sure all her best friends and family had the address of the post restante in that country. Basically, it is a postal collection point at a post office where your correspondence is kept safe until you call in to pick it up.
A friend of mine recalls the emotional impact of receiving a cheery letter from her mother after having travelled through Iraq to Pakistan. She had suffered numberless kilometres, bone-sore from being tossed around trucks bouncing along stony, unmettled roads. To top it all she was also dealing with sickness and diarrhoea. On arrival in Quetta, weak as a kitten, she had to be held up by her companions in order to make the short journey from the van to the post office. But her struggle was worth it for the sheer joy of holding a letter from home in her hands. As she read the opening salutation, tears coursed down her cheeks.
I can’t imagine the receipt of an email provoking quite as much bitter-sweet drama.
But back to now. The internet age. Despite my nostalgia for real letters, my attempt to go off the network this summer isn’t just a romantic ploy to relive the early 90s.
I’m seriously concerned about the effect all this technology is having on my child. I hate that we are expected to take it for granted, as inevitable, and accept the giant wedge that this technological hegemony is driving between parents and their children.
Parental controls are soon circumvented and the blurred line between using a computer for work and for leisure makes usage all the more difficult to police. Allowing internet access to kids means you are walking along a thundering motorway desperately hoping that the distraction of their game won’t lead them into the path of adult content and that the oncoming behemoth of predatory paeodophiles won’t come crashing into your home.
It’s tough to try and allow our children to merely dip a toe in the ocean of the internet, when they are more likely to take a running jump and dive right in.
I’d like to spend a whole other post exploring the psychological crack that electronic devices and their entertainment are - repetitive, addictive games are particularly damaging, in my opinion. But suffice to say, I feel I should practice what I preach when I decide to erase the iPad and its seductive games from my child’s summer. Sitting beside his bored, fidgety little body while glued to my phone or my Kindle, hardly sets the right example.
So, I'm going to do it - even though Amazon are spending a fortune on dazzling adverts featuring cosmopolitan mothers in Patagonia to remind me how cool and handy a Kindle is, even though I know it would be the easier option compared to humping seven novels across Europe …
Aargh!
#Havedeviceamaddicted
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