4.13

It's no secret that we've become dependent on our technology as a nation, so much so that there are times that we seem incapable of living without it at our constant finger tips.

Yesterday, I went to Zanies in Nashville to see Lewis Black perform as part of his new tour.

It is important to realize this fact, I don't go to Nashville very often. While in Tennessee I have lived in either suburban towns or for the majority of the time, in a small country town in the middle of nowhere. Given how it was an hour drive away from Nashville, making trips into the larger city was an extremely rare occurence. I therefore know very little about the layout of Nashville which is excerbated even more by the fact I typically do not travel there until it is already late at night, hardly the time for one to try to catalog mental landmarks to make navigating the city easier.

Fortunately for me, I have a smart phone with a GPS option. I used this function for the first time yesterday, turning it on as I passed the Briley Parkway enterance ramp on 24 in addition to my hand written instructions that I brought as a 'just in case' measure. I missed my ramp to 210B after for some strange reason driving North has the 210s in the following order C, A, and then B. By the time I realized this, it was too late for me to get in my lane. I turned on the first exit and the GPS came to my rescue and directed me to my destination from there, even after I accidentally ran a few red lights.

On the way back I decided to use the GPS again to find my way back to the interstate. It froze up on me for the remainder of the trip. I ended up in a fury of frustration having to turning around about three different times before exitting the GPS mode to the normal map locator and planned my drive by looking at the map rather than it telling me what to do (which ended up being taking 65 to 440 to 24 east).

Oddly enough one of Black's core materials was how the population of this country has a completely inane sense of what's important. In his example, he stressed "we can't agree over a health care policy that's meant to help us, but we know how many useless applications we can get on our iPhones. I have an application on this that allows me to come to a city like this, and the phone will tell me where the best place to get a slice of pizza is and how to get there by walking. I could always ask the people on my way to the place where the best place is, but f**k that, I have a phone doing it for me."

Our technology is great, but once it stops working, we need to be able to rely on ourselves.

Cheers,
Eric Summers