Let Me Google That

Well it’s been an eventful few days. At the end of last week my writing hat was well and truly on, I wrote a poem, jotted down some more ideas that popped into my head and found my head filled with questions to answer for my new fantasy series. You know those important questions like “who rules here” or “who is attacking that and why? Or “Why on earth would anyone want to rob a one legged dwarf, down on his luck for his last treasured possession?” 

Unfortunately this descended into the question of “Why can’t I get my computer to do anything for longer than a second before freezing?” The product of a Windows 10 update that well killed my computer.

This resulted in a lot of frustration and thanking my lucky stars that for once I’d had the presence of mind to print out my new poem before everything went belly up and pleading with my wonderful chap to use his massive technological know how to rescue me from a new life devoid of computers and an internet connection.

It is amazing how easy it is to get used to something and how lost we feel without it. For the last few days I have felt completely at sea. How did people do things like research for essays etc before the dawn of the internet and computers? Were people sat tirelessly wading through book after book in a library, jotting down ideas on pen and paper in long hand?

I am very lucky to live in an age where we can see practically anything we care to see at the click of a button. I can print off my musings in minutes rather than spending a good half hour writing out what I need to see in black and white.

Maybe though we have gotten too used to this technology? People always seem to have their heads down, tapping away at their phones or eyes glues to their computers that we barely talk to each other these days or notice the world around us. But when that technology is stripped away from us, like a power cut, we feel lost, unsure and almost afraid to venture into the darkness. A world that is not at our fingertips, or is it? Books can transport us anywhere we want to go, we just have to find the right one for us (and spare the time).

As a writer I am a bit obsessed with books…okay a lot…yet I rarely get to read anything more than a few pages a night because technology kind of takes over. The TV is on or the computer, yet without them, the world feels kind of wrong now and that in itself is crazy. People amused themselves adequately before the technological age…didn’t they? Is there a record somewhere that states that everyone before the ages of computers and TV’s was bored out of their minds for want of something to do?…Hang on let me google it…(damn it see what I mean? I can’t help myself!)

I have an addiction to technology…the knowledge that it puts right in front of me without my having to peruse countless newspapers, magazines and books in the hope I can find what I am looking for. I don’t have to scour the countryside or various pictures for some resemblance of what I imagine in my head when I think of something. I click a button and there it is gazing back at me in an instant. I guess because it is there so easily that we forget just how magical that is…to have all this at our fingertips…until…we can’t do it.

This week I have been reminded just how lucky I am to have all this. How precious those things are that surround us, because one day we might not have them and then what do we do?… Hang on I’ll just google that…