Overwhelmed

The other day I mentioned the overwhelming crowds at Bukit Bintang on Christmas Day. They weren't the only thing that seemed a bit much to me that day. As I also mentioned earlier we escaped them for thirty minutes or so by popping into the reasonably sedate Lot 10 shopping centre. It was in the mall that we came across a lot of advertising for Yes, an Internet service provider in Malaysia. Hamzah has an account with them and he's generously allowed us access to the Net through this for us in the past when we've struggled to get on-line.

The advertising in question was extolling the virtues of the 4G plan now being offered by Yes. I'm not exactly familiar with terms like 4G, but from what I can gather it allows lots of access to the Internet very, very quickly indeed. It seems that signing up allows you to watch youtube videos as you are on the move and to hold tele conferences with several participants talking all at once, amongst other novelties. Exciting. But who on earth would want to watch videos on the move and talk with various people all at once? Not me, I'm afraid. I have quite enough to do to keep me occupied, thank you.

And this, I have come to realise, is where I now stand vis a vis the wonderful world of IT. The technology is astonishing, magical almost, and I do not undervalue it. But I don't need any more of it to enhance my life, at least at this point. This applies even to something as simple as some kind of e-reader - an idea I was quite keen on up to a year ago. I find that I have such substantial amounts still to read, easy to acquire in old-fashioned ways (and via a laptop), that it would just be creating a kind of extra burden to acquire a gadget that made acquisition even easier. A lot of people tell me I really should acquire a smart phone - and I would do so if I could think of a good reason for it, but I honestly can't.

My general negativity may sound like contraryism for its own sake, and, of course, I do enjoy being out of step with the crowd, but I think something deeper is going on than that. I suspect that eventually lots of people are going to find themselves drawing a personal kind of line in the sand regarding the new technology and that they will be happier and healthier for it.