I think today will be a day to surrender to the forces of vacation - we spent the day on an interesting, if long excursion to see Maine's sights (which culminated in a spectacular view from the new bridge over Penobscot Bay). The net effect, though, was to leave me cut off from pretty much everything I use for instant updates - no cable TV, no internet, and even no real phone service.
I could give a cute bit about the frustrations of being "off the grid", but I think the cute back-and-forth of our lives just now ("I can't live without my Blackberry!") is frankly kind of tired - yeah, yeah, we get it - we're to tethered to our instant access devices... but we also get benefits from them.
As fashionable as neo-luddism is to express, it seems a bit beside the point: the internet isn't going anywhere, cell phones will remain in our lives, and our technological advances are not the end of some better old world; their simply new options, options many find useful, and ones that don't need to take over our lives completely. Yes, it can be refreshing and relaxing to be "off the grid" - but like anything it's a trade-off, and not always a welcome one.
It was a fine day of lazily moving up and down the Maine coast, going where the wind blew us, without a lot of set expectations. Forgive me if I also wanted to keep up on the developing stories of the day, or with my e-mail, or to occasionally text my pals who aren't nearby. That's part of the gift we get with the new technology... and I kind of like those gifts. But I'm out of touch, and it's after 6... and well, I can't just whip up a current affairs topic from news I largely haven't seen. Tomorrow, at some point, I'll be back in the mix. Fully. And it will be nice to be back, with time to spare.
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