Technology: A Love Story
We are technology, personified.
We are the blood and bones, the vessels and arteries, the heart and the mind of technology. It is the flex in our muscle, solid, supple, nimble. Exquisitely designed. It is in our lungs as we inhale and exhale the future. It is sparking, electrically delirious through our every pore. Cascading, corkscrewing, dizzying tech.
Yet we are human, social, naked, raw. We make mad love under strands of sparkling lights, skin-on-skin to electronic beats, then dip a plastic stick in our urine for the chemical reaction that will change our lives forever. Letters slowly form and fade into the small screen and within moments, the word we’ve been desperately waiting for appears. The 4-D scan captures the precious contents of her perfectly sculpted mid-term belly, shiny, taut, and champagne pink. Thump thump, thump thump. Tears leave glistening trails of love down her cheeks.
Rapid fingers on her screen, she frantically searches online retailers, then selects the gold-rimmed alabaster frame in which to place the picture of her unborn human. Payment already locked and loaded, she checks out from her online purchase and slips back into her clothes, caressing her bump and flashing herself a loving smile in the mirror as she exits the treatment room. Her inbox chimes, welcoming the still image and live stream video from the lab before she even steps off the elevator to the street level doors. She’s ecstatic to learn that the custom engraved frame will arrive on her doorstep by courier tomorrow before five o’clock from the warehouse two thousand miles away. At twenty-five years old, she giggles to herself at how traditional she must seem; photos in frames to adorn her mantelpiece, just like her mother’s, and her mother’s too.
The doctor has been texted and is en route, reviewing the patient file on the Cloud along her commute. The hospital is busy prepping the delivery room, filled with beeping and buzzing, numbers and data. Lights automatically adjusting, responding intuitively it seems to the changing needs of the moment. The family is frantically sharing the news, minute by minute through every social media app available across the devices of this waiting room. Excitement and anticipation as a new human enters a new world; a world that never existed the same way just a day earlier. The silvery umbilical cord will be cut and will likely be the last cord this emerging human is ever attached to.
Here he is, bubble-gum pink. We watched him travel through her body on a nearby screen, into the human world. We knew more about him in his first trimester than an earlier generation could have known across their entire lifetime. We knew he was a boy and watched his heart literally beat from every angle, recognized the fullness of his lips just like his mother’s, the chin square just like his father’s and watched him wave and suck his thumb with incredible skill. In twenty-four hours, dad will Uber the family home, remotely setting the thermostat at a balmy 74 degrees so it is lovely and warm when they arrive at their quaint little flat in the village. He will disarm the alarm and unlock the front door from his phone as the driver approaches the old iron gate and mom will tell Google to turn on the lights to the nursery and start the lullaby playlist. The baby’s great auntie in Guyana, older sister, spending the long weekend at a far north cabin with friends of the family and grandparents golfing in the Florida Keys join on Skype for a family gathering. While not a meeting of new-baby smells, cooing and adoring the tiniest of fingernails, it makes what was once unimaginable, real.
He will grow up, surrounded by technologies to help him to see, hear, smell, taste and touch the world in heightened ways. His future will flourish, welcoming exponential potential to think, create and act without limits. He will see opportunities others won’t and will not fear chasing them. He will never ask, “What if?” He will simply do, for the world he was born into does not house innovation-hesitation. He will be confident and inspired, raised in a world where there are no boundaries to the enormity and complexity of the human experience. He will touch every corner of this planet and each will feel like a piece of home. He will share in relationships, but there will be fewer walls and greater pathways. There will be problems in the world and he will have a significant hand in solving them. He will face dire personal challenges, relying on the progression of technology for hope.
His parents will speak to him of the good old days; when you plugged in a device called a cellphone to charge it, pushed a button to roll down the car windows, stood in line at an ATM, spent $80 to fill up the gas tank, paid for a new pair of shoes through the tap of a plastic card, relied on the little blue pill, idled in expressway traffic jams, collected points, used Sign Language, and waited 26 months on a list for a heart transplant, performed by a team of 16 specialists.
He can’t fathom such a world, and with a subtle shaking of his head, he’ll chuckle quietly to himself as his parents reminisce on how easy things used to be back then. He will gently kiss their foreheads and make his way home. There, he will make mad love to his wife under the stars in a universe that has remained constant in an ever-changing world.
We do not fear technology; we fear loss. Loss of tradition. Loss of knowing. Loss of familiarity. Loss of comfort. Loss of control. Technology was always emerging in its own way, for thousands upon thousands of years. The forward motion of human civilization has depended on it. Being tasked with the privilege of human life automatically places us, by nature in a position to progress. Using the gifts nature gave us, bountiful brains and beautiful hearts to create an infinite world of possibilities is simply non-negotiable.
The human experience becomes no less the human experience in the company of technological advancement. Perhaps it feels less sexy. More superficial. Less tangible. More clinical. Both foreign yet awkwardly enticing.
We needn’t abandon evolving or reject change for fear of losing our humanness. Nature came first and since the beginning of time, nature has proven it will always win.
Technology is simply another skin to live in. It is ideas, knowledge, creativity. It pushes boundaries, then eliminates them. It tests the limits, then redefines them. It takes risks, then ups the ante. It gives birth to originality and breeds uniqueness. It drops seeds and blooms fruit to nourish our intellectual gut. It expands dreams and builds bridges of hope. It connects.
Like us, it is imperfect. Like us, it will create problems and like us, it will solve them. Oh yes, it has it’s dark side too, but it will shine a light on this world that is so much brighter, as we all most certainly do.
Technology is to us as we are to the earth. Carriers of light and instruments of progress.
