Improving life and personal connections through technology

Not long ago, I acquired an e-mail from an aged friend in England. Tony wrote that his wife’s 70th birthday was coming up, and he is inquiring their quite a few pals to deliver playing cards to her in care of their son, so she would get them all at when at a surprise celebration. I despatched a card — throughout the Atlantic — with a lot of superior needs. And quite a few months ago, I viewed on YouTube a friend’s spouse and children celebration in Edinburgh, Scotland.

While COVID has saved us apart bodily, technological know-how has brought us together.

And so, with no sounding like Pollyanna, with war raging in Ukraine, gasoline costs rising and COVID not still concluded, there are delighted items going on, thanks to growing technology.

For example, on Monday nights I have been instructing my Hopkins Odyssey courses on Zoom — 19th century English Intimate poets right now. In the earlier two many years, my class members have arrive from Chicago, San Francisco, New York Metropolis, Florida and Connecticut. Several of my good friends and I have been taking Smithsonian programs on Zoom.

On Wednesdays at noon, also on Zoom, my Bible Examine fulfills with customers from 3 Baltimore Metropolis churches participating. And 1000’s of people have been and however are doing work remotely, thus preventing prolonged commutes and, in some cases, official dress.

Whilst, as an English teacher, I continue to choose to examine regular paper textbooks, I admire the Kindle description that creator and former Baltimore Sun reporter Laura Lippman writes in “The Reserve Thing”: Claims she, “books could are living inside of units, glowing like captured genies, desperate to get back again out in the planet and grant peoples’ wishes.”

Speaking of granting wishes, I not long ago noticed on the PBS NewsHour, a section on 3D printed residences. Via know-how, a house — 1,500 sq. toes with 3 bedrooms, two bogs and a garage — can be built in 24 hrs, and the charge is considerably considerably less than a conventional residence.

This new project is projected to improve much more than $1.5 billion in 2024. As a outcome, lots of very low-profits people who by no means thought they could very own a property, will be equipped to.

The use of technology inside of a home is extensive. When I questioned Marshall, my tech-savvy cousin in North Carolina, to listing the complex units he and his spouse use in their two homes, he to start with spelled out that before they generate to their next house on the water, a few several hours absent, they can, by means of their phones, have the electrical energy turned on as well as the warmth, whilst in the past, they experienced to talk to a neighbor to do that.

To estimate Marshall, “between Jan and me, we have two iPhones, two Kindles, a desktop Personal computer, Home windows laptops, iPads, MacBook pro, printers, scanners, intelligent Tv, Amazon Echos, and many others.”

With their telephones, in addition to contacting, texting, emailing and photographing, they do all their banking, all their buying, as effectively as start their automobiles, read books and maps, do investigate, and their record goes on.

Of study course, every new invention is not a panacea, and peoples’ standard resistance to transform is often a dilemma.

The a single example that comes to mind is the invention of frozen foods. In “The Superb Lives of Marjorie Submit,” author Allison Pataki points out how resistant Marjorie Merriweather Post’s 2nd partner was as CEO of Publish Cereals (women could neither maintain these positions nor sit on boards in the early 1900s) when Marjorie wished to get Clarence Birdseye’s smaller frozen-fish company. Luckily for the earth, Marjorie prevailed, and frozen foods, creating daily life less difficult and much healthier, are marketed and consumed nearly everywhere in the globe.

In truth, numerous folks nonetheless want to interact in man or woman nonetheless, working with technological innovation would make life less complicated and connects us in techniques that under no circumstances seemed doable, a definite good between our troubles today.

Lynne Agress, who teaches in the Odyssey Plan of Johns Hopkins, is president of BWB-Small business Writing At Its Very best Inc. and creator of “The Female Irony” and “Working With Words and phrases in Company and Legal Writing.” Her e mail is [email protected].