Electronic Crisis

Communications technology has drastically transformed the world we live in today. It is almost unrecognisable from the world we were born in. I remember my first word processing program - Wordperfect, and remember the time when Windows existed on houses, not in computers. We were taping programs & songs on VCR and cassette tapes, and used to spend huge amounts of money printing out multiple copies of photos to send to various friends & releatives.

While new communications platforms are revolutionising our offices, home and countries - i'm struggling with the power of communications. Literally. I own: 1 work phone & 1 personal phone, 1 office laptop & 1 personal laptop, 1 PDA, 1 ipod, 1 digital camera... No I'm not trying to brag. I'm trying to tell you what a hard time I'm having in keeping all of them fully charged and fit for use.

If you took away all my power cords and chargers, I'm basically incapacitated and rendered useless, ineffective and superfluous. I can no longer write a letter without having to hit "Enter" for paragraphs. My hands hurt when I have to use pen and paper to write anything more than 150 words. I am also clueless about postage costs for local and international mail. My fingers hurt when I have to press more than 1 button to dial a friend. I now have no clue what are the first few numbers of my best friend's home phone.

Without all my modern day electronics, I'll probably be fired from my job (since I communicate 95% through email and need to upload stuff onto the web). I will lose contact with all my friends as their contact numbers are all stored in either my mobile phone or PDA. I'll be uninspired without my ipod and have photos with all my flaws (digital photos allow me to "touch up" a pimple, shiny face, freckles, etc.)...

I should really have a back up plan for communicating with others should there come a day when the world runs out of electricity. Just thinking about that freaks me out.