By Kerri Havnen Gordon
The Living Experiment
It’s a virtual world, I reason while playing yet another game of solitaire. You see, there are no cards in my hand; there is no shuffling, no soft tapping noises as I manipulate the deck. There is nothing tactile at all. My solitaire game is of the computer variety, just point and click and an entire game, including the shuffling, begins and ends in a few short minutes. The experience is silent, non-sensory except for the eyes and a single hand on the mouse.
Similarly, I recently used the Web site MapQuest to provide precise door-to-door directions for a 3-hour drive. The resulting trek was on one hand pleasingly effortless, but it was also naggingly predictable. Unlike using a real map, there was no guesswork involved, no room for error. While I appreciated the ease, I also nostalgically recalled our road trips before the virtual world made everything a tad too easy.
I remembered times when, perplexed, we pulled off the highway and studied the jagged lines of a real paper road map, splayed across the front seat. Our fingers traced the route, and we furrowed our brows at the suspense of not knowing quite where or when to turn next. Then we inexpertly folded the map and ventured on. There was something gratifying about using a map, something adventurous.
The Internet age has simplified these and many other tasks, thereby making them both irresistible and boringly dummy-proof. After succumbing to the lure of technology, I have occasionally felt vaguely cheated by having yet another virtual experience rather than a real one.
Nonetheless, in true Silicon Valley form, I have gone almost fully virtual. I no longer have an address book or calendar, filled with my messy scrawl and countless little bits of paper. Instead I have a tidy Palm Pilot, to which I have become ridiculously attached, with all its point and click simplicity.
And then there is e-mail. I am addicted to the inherent ease of this form of communication and cannot imagine going back to “snail mail.” But there are fewer personal letters in my mailbox and almost no handwriting to affectionately recognize there. Not surprisingly, I have become too lazy to write actual letters, despite the accompanying satisfaction of walking to the mailbox and raising the flag. Most personal mail comes and goes via computers where virtual mailboxes capture the missives, and they all arrive in identical Times New Roman font.
Maybe it is the country girl in me that whispers, “Something is amiss here.” Growing up in the country, after all, was a highly sensory experience with all that nature to enjoy. Back then, the only virtual realities were my daydreams, which I usually indulged sitting six feet up a stout tree.
These days my life is hectic, and my virtual world consumes more hours than perhaps it should. I spend many of my 20 hours at work in front of a computer screen and more still at home attending to e-mail, writing, reading the news, Web-surfing, and yes, playing computer solitaire. While I welcome and am truly grateful for all my virtual, timesaving conveniences, I cannot deny that my senses occasionally feel deprived in the midst of all this technology.
For better or worse, my virtual world is here to stay, but a subtle shift is in order. To balance the non-sensory age of high technology, I need to get out more and touch and smell and see and hear the real, not virtual, world.
I know there is an actual deck of cards around here somewhere. I have some important shuffling to do, with cards and with life.
Gordon’s column is published the second week of the month. Send comments and suggestions to: Livingexperiment@pacbell.net
