The Digital Age.......worth the price?

I'm not afraid to admit that when it comes to music: I LOVE IT! I've always had a soft spot for the arts and I always will. From huge concert venue bands to coffee-shop artists, I love listening to them all and giving each one a fair shot on my iPod. Some of my favorite music comes from random albums given to me.....or even just randomly flipping through the recommendations on iTunes.

Recently, one of my high school peers sent me his demo cd and just like with anything new, I excitedly popped it into my cd player and took a listen. I was taken back a little by the quality of the album, which has a slightly rough, but definitely well-written feel. Every track kept me interested, the lyrics simple in their conveyed meaning and by the end.....the demo became a part of my ever-growing iTunes collection. But that's not what amazes me.

What amazes me that when I looked to see where it was recorded, I realized that it was done all by computer in his bedroom. In the age of technology, there have been several advances in many fields. Now, we can order our sandwiches electronically at a convenience store, have machines count our change at the bank, and create our own albums and movies using handheld equipment and programs we can purchase at Best Buy. Gone are the days where you had to go into a studio to produce your own album or edit your movies for showing. 

Technology has become something we have come to rely on in this day and age. Oddly enough, I fall just on the line of knowing what it was like before we had this advanced technology. You were considered wealthy if you had ONE desktop computer in your house, let alone the internet. In 7th grade, I was just beginning to understand what AOL was and how Instant Messenger and chat rooms functioned. Nowadays, I can function on a higher level with internet pages and social media. All instant messaging can be consolidated to one window instead of having to open several programs to use each one. And even though I don't consider it to be a huge deal, it amazes people when they ask me the simplest of computer questions and I'm able to direct them where they need to go.

But sometimes, I miss childhood. I miss that whole feeling of spending time outside playing instead of cooped up inside doing work. I miss when instead of calling up a friend on your cell to chat, you would go to their house to see if they were home instead. I miss Barbie Dream Cars and Saturday morning cartoons in your feetie pajamas. And most of all, I miss that tangible quality to life that technology just can't give you. An Amazon Kindle doesn't smell the same as a musty old book that's filled with history and an iPod, while incredibly awesome to have, doesn't have the same sound as listening to "The White Album" on vinyl. 


I'm not knocking the advancements in technology, but sometimes I do feel that we're too reliant on it for the simplest of tasks in life. We forget what it's like when our cell phones have a dead battery or get lost, panicking in the process of trying to find what we feel is our link to the outside. Or what happens when our iPod refuses to turn on and we need to resort to another method of blocking out the world when we're in public. Hell, I've seen several posts about people feeling completely lost when their computers finally break and they need to be fixed. It makes me question whether or not anyone remembers what we did before technology took over our lives.

So while I may be well past bumming a ride from my parents to a friend's house, I climb into my own car and pop on my friend's album, jamming out to the music at the top of my lungs. While technology has a huge, conflicting influence on my life (and mind), I can still appreciate how it has revolutionized the way we receive media and function daily. And maybe sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I could do without it.

~Jenny Rockstar