An unwired life

Posted in Mom Stuff
by besttech

At my house, we are living a very unwired life. Not to say that I haven’t tried to drag my family into the new millennium. Sure, my 7-year-old looks stuff up online for school. The kids love to play on Webkinz. Even my 4-year-old has been known to play at Nick Jr. online. And I think it is just the cutest thing when my 2-year-old tries to copy his sisters and say “dot com.” Sadly for me, the one who loves all things shiny and gadgety, this is about where we draw the line. My husband shuns the very notion that you need a laptop so that you can get online from anywhere. Not only are we a house with a mere single Internet connecting entity, but we have no Wii, no webcam, no DS, nothing of the kind. The only thing my 2-year-old would do with an iPod Touch is try to eat it.

Not exactly living in medieval times, we do have cell phones, digital cable and other such modern conveniences. However you may be reading the rantings of the only would-be professional blogger who still blogs on a clunky PC in the corner of her basement. It’s true. Shameful but true. I have no laptop. No iPhone here. Not a BlackBerry or Palm Pilot in sight around these parts. I blame my husband. I’ve tried to make him see the shiny, high-tech light. I’ve tried to explain to him what Twitter is and why I use it. I’ve extolled the virtues of shelling out the money for a laptop. I’ve presented him with charts, graphs and spreadsheets (all of which could not have been created without all of the modern technology that he rebukes) detailing why it is important for me to be able to update people as to what I am doing when I am waiting to drop the kids off for preschool. (People care — I swear they do!) He’s not going for it at all. To most of the people we associate with ‘in real life’, we have the prefect amount of connectivity to the high tech world. I am the only blogger among my family and friends. Not a single person that I speak to on a daily basis knows what Twitter, Technorati or Skype are, unless I have told them. Frankly, most people think my desire to be so plugged in is a little peculiar. Sometimes I wonder if they are right. Is it natural to be so plugged in? Is it normal for me to not only allow, but to desire people to know what I am doing at any given moment?

Having been traveling the information superhighway for several years now, I was certainly aware that there are plenty of very tech savvy families out there. Plenty of couples who exchange memory cards and the latest in geeky gadgets in place of perfume and sweaters for holiday gifts. I just never realized that there were so many. I try to tell my husband that this super tech lifestyle is becoming more mainstream. I try to tell him that this is the way everyone will communicate, work, and live soon. And most of the time I feel like that is a good thing. Most of the time.

Maybe the “wired life’ is only mainstream, if everyone that you associate yourself with is living the same wired life. If you asked 100 people at a Web design convention what it meant to Digg something or to StumbleUpon something, it’s likely that 99 would know the answer. If you asked the same question of bloggers, again likely the answer would be high in the 90s. But, if you walked into a mall in say, Omaha, and asked this question, would five people even know? Would one person know? So just what are we calling mainstream now? Maybe my husband is right. Maybe we are too connected. Well, I know we’re not, but maybe some people are. Although I sometimes feel like the most unwired person on earth, I think the happy medium that we actually have, works best for us. Mixing “traditional toys” like puzzles and dolls and blocks, and more modern high-tech learning tools, help our kids to understand that there are many different elements to playing and learning.

I often fantasize that we sell our home, buy some land, build a “green” house, and live life “off the grid” for the rest of our days. My family spends it days planting and tending to our gardens, making our own clothes, doing crafts together and living simply. The fantasy is always beautiful, always happy, always… missing something. And then I realize that my real fantasy, what I want more than anything, is a shiny new wireless notebook to blog on. So much for living the unwired life.

–Michelle W., PHILADELPHIA MOMS BLOG

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Michelle W. is a contributor to the Philadelphia Moms Blog, http://www.phillymomsblog.com.