My Technology Blog

It was hard to keep exact track of my technology use over the past week because I realized that I use it so often. The following are what I used my cell phone and laptop for the most, making me quite dependent on them:

-As an alarm clock in the morning or to check the time throughout the day
-To check emails in the morning on my Gmail and internship e-mail account
-To text frequently (mostly my best friend and roommates)
-To check or add things on my "to-do" list or calendar
-Twitter updates on my phone (from News 8 and the Statesman, mostly for work purposes)
-To check my balance in my checking account
-For homework purposes (reading New York Times, research, etc.)

Within the last week, technology has been crucial in communicating with my sister, who is in Brazil for the week. She sent out a couple of texts letting me and my family know she made it over, and has emailed us a few times as well.

I think the power of texting became evident to me Tuesday morning when I was communicating with about five people at the same time, trying to get some work shifts switched around. My boss sent me a text and immediately I was writing to my coworkers to ask their availability. Within about five minutes I had everything figured out.

In this case, I think messaging should not be seen as negative because it was useful and efficient in my workplace. However, I do think it has taken away from the personalization of talking on the phone. For the past week, I realized I have not talked on the phone to someone for more than a couple of minutes to let them know I was on my way somewhere or to ask them a question.

It was hard to track exact time of my technology use, but on average I think I used over 3 hours a day checking emails, text messaging, "Facebooking," and more.


***I was going to publish this earlier today around class time, but I decided to wait because I used an even greater amount on my laptop and cell phone because of the plane crash in north Austin. After I heard about the crash via Twitter on my phone, I went home to sit in front of my television and laptop with several tabs open: Twitter to get minutely updates, the CNN website, News 8's website, and Facebook.

This just showed how dependent I was on technology during news-breaking events in order to find our more information as quickly as possible.