'Great god of technology'

To be totally honest with you all, the only reason I got up to write this is because I’ve had enough of maths revision for today. The amount of times I’ve written ‘substitute’ and ‘inequalities’ in the last hour is ridiculous. Okay, so maybe it’s not as many times as you’re probably imagining but it’s definitely enough for me... So here I am, writing this. I do enjoy writing this though so hopefully this will give me a bit of a break of sorts...

Usually my daily life involves my phone (actually, it always does) and this isn’t the best formula for effective revision. I have to listen to music whilst I revise - I just can’t seem to handle it in silence, and at least Fall Out Boy can make polynomial division slightly more bearable. I even read with music playing, which some people find a bit strange, but I honestly don’t find it a problem at all. Getting back to the point though, with my phone being with me all the time it just makes it so much harder to revise – not that I’m exactly changing that...

We were looking at a source in history a while ago about how people worshipped the ‘great god of technology’. Now that was written all the way back in the 1960s, but it made me think –it’s still pretty true. Just as a disclaimer, I’m not one of those “technology is so bad it’s poisoning our minds” people... Those people do get a bit much at times. Yes, I see where you’re coming from, but honestly, technology is pretty bloody cool.

I put my hands up – I am addicted to technology. I’m not wallowing in that fact, I just know that I am. I have a Twitter account, I have Facebook, I have whatever else there is and I’m content with that. I am knitted into the cyber universe (wow, way to sound forty years old, Laura); and whilst people may preach about how we should throw our phones and laptops out of the nearest window and run off into the wilderness; that’s never going to happen. Yes, people may be on their phones a lot, but a lot of that (for me anyway) is usually socialising. Twitter is pretty great for me, really. A group of people, separate to my main ‘squad’ (that’s the official name now, I’m told) that I can talk with at 2am about stuff that interests us – I’ve actually met a lot of great friends online (and no they were not forty year old paedophiles). That of course doesn’t mean I can’t talk to my ‘in real life’ friends but it’s sometimes fun to have some people to rant and joke with online about some obscure topic that concerns something pretty trivial. Twitter can be quite eye-opening at times but also very hilarious.

I know I would most definitely get more work done if I didn’t have Twitter or Facebook (who am I kidding - I barely use Facebook) but I wouldn’t give them up. In the future I may have a break from them possibly, but now I’ve been online for so long it’s sort of hard to contemplate a situation where I'm not always up to date with news or I don't have somewhere to post my daily rambles. Plus, without sounding slightly creepy, you can stay anonymous if you want, especially on sites like Twitter – people don’t have to know everything about you, you can just pick the things you want to share, which you can’t always do in real life. Also, to be honest I can be very socially awkward in real life situations so typing behind a screen is a nice comfort sometimes. I realise this paragraph has made me sound like a malicious cyber-stalker, but I can promise you I am not... 

The internet is a great place. Apart from the aspect of cyber bullying, I've never fully understood why people would want to get rid of the internet altogether and hark back to the olden days. I mean the fact that I can look up the most random fact and get an answer instantly is pretty amazing. I know I’d be hopeless at doing the crossword in the paper if I didn’t have the internet, that’s for sure. Some more face-to-face interaction would be nice, I guess, but saying that the internet is this dangerous entity ruining our generation? No...

Does this count as a rant? I’m not sure it does, to be honest, so that’s an achievement. According to psychology I have a type A personality so that means I’m easily irritated. Hit the nail on the head there, psychology. But at the same time I have a zero hardiness score for stress so that’s a lovely thought, isn’t it? (The top score was 18. Oh god.)

Anyway, I think this is a long enough ramble for today.

Laura.