I was fascinated at the time by the December 2009 “Power Down” episode of the American television crime drama “NCIS” in which many facets of life were stopped by a power outage and law enforcement was forced to continue its work stripped of computers and high-tech forensics. Inventions like scanners, fax machines, photo copiers and e-mail were suddenly unavailable so the crew had to resort to Polaroid cameras, flash bars, and mimeograph machines. Do you remember those antiquated technologies?

Well, I do. During my lifetime I’ve witnessed the comings and goings of a multitude of technological inventions. Some, in fact, are still displayed in my office: a stereo 8 Track player, a Kodak Hawkeye 8 mm movie camera, a Remington Rand typewriter, a reel-to-reel tape with music from my teenage years, a rotary phone, and a crystal radio set that helped me track the Toronto Maple Leafs every Saturday night thanks to the commentary of Foster Hewitt. So, as someone who has experienced bread, milk, and ice being delivered by horse-drawn wagons, seen the blackened face of the coal man, put up with test patterns on early televisions, suffered being infuriated by competition on telephone party-lines, inserted data into second-generation computers using punched data cards, and relied heavily on my student computer-guru Jeremy, I can certainly appreciate how far we’ve progressed with technology. And, in hindsight, most certainly some have caused me to ask, “How did anybody survive without that?”

We humans can point to defining events that identify critical moments when our lives were changed by technology: less outdoor play after television drew us inside; a decay of distance as wireless lessened the bonds of place. And some were dramatic, such as in the case of my uncle who in 1888, at the young age of sixteen, mangled his hands in a saw mill accident on the Bruce Peninsula. His injuries were so extensive that both hands had to be amputated. He tried several manufactured hands, but was not satisfied. So, being an innovator, he conceived the idea, designed, and with the help of his father built his own hands; and then each summer left Meaford and traveled with the Ripley show to fairs and exhibitions across the North American continent. My uncle became so adept at using his hands of steel that he could tie a bow in his shoe laces, throw a ball, play the mouth organ, turn the leaves of books, and communicate in the written form neater than most people.

In contrast to my innovative uncle, marketers would peg me somewhere between a ‘late majority type’ and a ‘traditionalist’; I do hang on to the past more often than I innovate. Kodak might have had me in mind with the introduction of their new digital camera that functions like my old Polaroid Land camera, producing a hard copy on the spot. It would appear that they were betting that consumers, like me, appreciate the new digital world but cherish parts of the past; I admit to being nostalgic about what we’ve lost: drivers looking around, not down; people connecting flesh to flesh; the tether of place with the expansion of wireless; the fading lure of stylish covers and book jackets; the rattling sound as paper maps unfold; and the imperfections of film and the graceful overload to white.

But while I don’t claim to be a ‘techie’, I certainly have been impacted by communication technology; if it saves me time or money, or if it enriches my life without hurting mother earth I’m interested, sooner or later. For instance, a roofer I was thinking of using recently gave me a business card containing his phone number but no address. I immediately googled ‘Yellow Pages’, inserted the telephone number, and then let my computer dig up the address. On another occasion a neighboring couple who spent the summers at a somewhat remote campsite some distance from Windsor asked my wife and I to visit and provided an address. Before setting off I simply typed in the address in my GPS and then enjoyed the ride until the checker flag and a soothing voice announced I had reached the destination.

So where do I fit into all of this technology; a ‘semi-traditionalist’ who got upset when vinyl record players were removed from the market? Well, the truth is that there are only two items of modern computer-related communication technology, both relatively inexpensive- I’m Scottish- that I wonder how we ever lived without.

Second on my list of ‘got to have’ communication technology would be e-mail, the issue of spam notwithstanding- modern browsers can filter out most of it; the benefits far outweigh the cons. The time savings and the world-wide outreach at times is mind boggling: my sister, while on vacation in France would visit Internet Cafés and use her hotmail account to keep family and friends up-to-date on her meanderings; my writing business used e-mail attachments to fill orders from clients such as an exchanged teacher in Firenze, Italy.

First in importance, however, and truly something I wonder how I ever lived without, are search engines; and in particular Google. How many times have I seen or heard something and run to my computer ‘to Google’ it. When my wife was hospitalized for an extended period of time, for instance, and I became her advocate- each day produced a new term or short form to be deciphered; a BM was mild compared to some- I was constantly ‘googling’ something (and if I spelled the keyword incorrectly Google asked “Did you mean…?” along with suggestions of the correct spelling). The neologism ‘to Google’, in fact, was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary on June 15, 2006, and to the eleventh edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in July 2006.

What’s next on the horizon that we won’t be able to live without? Well…actually I don’t care. I’m a traditionalist; and an environmentalist. You know, of course that reduce is the first component of the waste-reduction hierarchy. Uhm…where is that old Andy Williams record?  Darn… I must admit that if it was digital I could find it easier.