There’s no denying that technology has ushered some incredible conveniences into our lives. Instant communication with friends and loved ones, two-hour grocery delivery, and turn-by-turn navigation to just name a few.

I’ve been a sci-fi writer for a long time and a bonafide nerd from my earliest memory. It goes without saying that I’m a large proponent of tech but I also have a healthy fear of it. Our technology is growing faster than we can adapt to it. As a result of this, we must study our relationship with technology in hindsight to understand it. We must be diligent in trying to discover all of the ways in which technology is changing us. Our attention is being constantly splintered and fragmented to such a degree that it’s rewiring our brains.

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." ~ Albert Einstein

Our Greatest Addiction

Mobile phone addiction is epidemic, period. Everyone who owns one is probably addicted to a certain degree whether they want to admit it or not and now there’s no going back.

All it takes to come to this conclusion is to look around you when you’re in any public place. I can almost guarantee wherever you are you’ll see at least one person putting themselves and/or others at risk by walking, biking, or even driving a car while being hypnotized by their phones. It's very likely, you'll see more than one.

People habitually ignore one another in social situations, giving their phones top priority to anything or anyone around them. This will be one of the largest regrets of our time, not being more "in the moment."

I was at an outdoor concert recently and decided to give Facebook Live a try for the first time so I could share my experience with my friends on social media. I went “live” and immediately the views and likes started rolling in triggering a flow of happiness chemicals in my brain.

All of a sudden I became absorbed in trying to get a good clear shot of the band and keeping my phone stable so the video feed wasn’t shaky. Then it struck me...I was more concerned with capturing a quality video than I was listening to the band. I stopped broadcasting...immediately. I asked myself who am I living for, me or my social media followers?

I see so many people in public and on social media using their devices as a mobile production studio to try to capture the moment or even create a fictitious or alternative version of their own life and reality. My philosophy is normally do what you want as long as you’re not harming anyone else but realize that you may be harming yourself and/or limiting your own potential.

Time Is Precious

Life passes us by in the blink of an eye. There are so many distractions these days. At any given moment we’re bombarded with stimuli, in the real world and the virtual one, that scream for our attention.

It's interesting to think of the real world as if it operated like Steemit. Our attention is like our own personal "upvote" that we can give to the things and people around us that we feel enrich our lives.

Thankfully we still have full control of our personal upvote. We have complete freedom to decide how we spend minutes, hours, and days of our lives. I think Einstein would agree, there's a symbiotic relationship between our happiness and making balanced choices. We continually write the chapters that make up the book of our lives and, to a large degree, we decide whether our book will be shelved in the dystopian or utopian sections.

It’s always so important to ask yourself…Who am I living for?

As always, thank you for reading.

Eric Vance Walton

(Gifs sourced from Giphy.com)

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