10 Tools or Technologies the Internet Replaced

I’m writing this around the most recent holidays, and thought about running to the Internet each time I need a recipe.  Of all things to have to do, with a shelf full of cook-books I’ve collected over the years, along with written recipes I’ve collected from family and friends – why would I still run to my computer to find a recipe for Broccoli Corn Bread?  Let’s all together say –  “Because it is easier, that’s why!”  Thanks for indulging me.

Aren’t we pitiful?  We hardly if ever think for ourselves because we have become dependent on the computer and its offerings.  Do we ever use the phone book anymore?  Isn’t it just as easy to go to the internet and Google someone’s name?  Or how do we find our way to Idaho,  Or Columbus?  We have one of those gigantic road atlases in the car-I’ll take that back- we once did.  Better now, we have the trusted GPS.  No modern family should leave home without one.

My husband spent his working years as an over-the-road truck Driver.  One blessed thing that has come from the technology age is the cell phone.  Replacing the anguish of needing him to call when I had a crisis at home, and not hearing from him until the crisis was passed.  So to say the tool of the cell phone has replaced anxious moments is stretching it a bit, but I sure am thankful for that little hand held gadget.

Oh yes, the internet has replaced check writing to pay bills, and hoping the payment will get there on time!  Whew!  What a blessing to go into bill pay the first of the month, anticipating when money will actually be there, and telling the internet banking system to pay them for me.

And now with the internet, does your check book stay in balance?  Oh yes, one doesn’t have to purchase Quicken. Microsoft has a program simple enough to keep your check register, as long as you record everything that goes out.  We still have to do that.  And by doing so, we can go online to our bank, and check the balance with our system, and stay on top of things.

Trips to the library to find the answer in a book is what we once did.  Now we never leave home because we can Google.  Do you still have a set of Encyclopedias? They are obsolete you know!  Can’t sell them either.  There is no market for antique books that I am aware of anyway.

I wonder how the post office is staying in business.  Does anyone write letters anymore?  What did we do before e-mail?  I found a letter my mother wrote to me several years before she died.  Had it been in an e-mail (which by the way) she never saw a computer), an email would have long been destroyed.  However, I was able to read the letter as though it was fresh again.  I could almost see her writing it or for sure hear her saying each word.

I refuse to use things like, idk, ily, lol, r u or whatever else the new generation uses to confound me.  I teach writing to a group of home schooled kids.  One thing I come down hard on is that NO ONE uses idioms (for lack of a better word), in writing.  I grade heavily for miss-spelled and miss-used words.  So to sum up this last paragraph, I believe we are raising a generation who will not know how to spell because of spell-check or abbreviations.   I wonder if this generation of people, whether adult or adolescents know how to use a Dictionary.  Just wondering…

I’ll go one step beyond the original 10 with this suggestion of the bar-code.  The electronic inventory counter and the cashier who doesn’t have to know how to make change, but trust what her computerized cash register tells her the change should be.  It is bigger than both of us.  You who are reading this, and me who is writing this.

I don’t want to go back in time.  However I do believe this and future generations are missing out by not having to apply themselves to their God given abilities such as thinking for one.  Just my view you understand.
-- Guest post by: Doris T

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