A few things that may or may not happen in the future have been looking a bit disconcerting for me lately. But thankfully, the schedule has been such that I've not had much time to think about it.

There's always time to be concerned about things, I suppose, if one wants to take that time. I'd much rather stay busy than stay worried.

There are certain times when I sabotage myself, like last Saturday when I didn't really accomplish very much. Well, unless you count going to a dinner theater at the church and watching a movie on television.

I've come to appreciate the wisdom behind some of my friends' choices to be something besides television watchers. In fact, one friend and his family have completely ‘tuned out' of the television thing. Not only do they not have cable, satellite or even antenna service, they don't even own a television.

I think they have a really nice stereo, though. Does that count?

I've worked hard to limit my children's exposure to television, with varying degrees of success. What that means is that they sometimes end up watching more than I'd like for them to. The other morning I got up and got my first cup of coffee and headed into the living room, where the children were already turning on the television. "Turn that off and go do your chores," I chided.

Within 10 minutes, I returned to the sound of animated superheros battling it out with a fiendish sandwich. I'm not making this up.

The second reminded came in the form of, "You know we're limiting television to two hours or less per day and you need to turn this off now or you won't get to watch later this evening." As one child went to Bible school and the other to practice a summer sport, I headed off to work. However, when I returned from lunch with my Bible school girl, the other was sitting watching a cartoon. I can't swear to it, but it actually looked like exactly the same cartoon I had seen earlier that morning (the one with the evil sandwich).

I was beginning to feel like my warnings were going unheeded as the television was turned off again just in time for lunch. Well, there really wasn't a lunch, since everyone was either working on the computer, at work or watching television.

Just then, my brain realized, "We're all media junkies." Games, Internet, e-mail, social networking sites, Web sites, news, cartoons, live movies on the Internet, viral videos and sitcoms, all available at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse. So much entertainment, so little time. But what is it costing us? Person-to-person live communications and interactions seem to be the first victim. So are we losing track of who were are because of our love affair with technology?

Perhaps technology actually defines who we are these days. It's more to do with where we write it than what we write sometimes. For instance, when was the last time you received a letter? Not the kind you read on a screen, but the kind that comes in a real metal mailbox with a stamp on the outside of its clean white envelope? When was the last time you wrote one?

I know the last one I received was from a reader who mentioned that she reads the column often. Those are usually the only letters I ever get and I really appreciate getting feedback from people, even though it isn't very often coming.

Recently I spoke with a teacher who indicated that writing (with a pen) isn't seen as very important now. Perhaps grocery lists, ‘notes to self' and all those Stickies will eventually go away, replaced by "text messages to self" or e-mails sent from the computer to the cell phone or some other new fangled way to do stuff.

Even with e-mail coming on strong in the mid 1990s and people predicting the end of the postal service as we knew it, I never thought I'd live to see the day when letters went away. I now think we might.

In fact, one of my friends even prophesied that newspapers are also a relic of the past. That our weekly news reports, columns, photos and coverage are all going to fade away as the Internet becomes all that it was designed to be.

However, will people be satisfied with untrustworthy and anonymous sources giving them hack and slash accounts of what happened here or there? There are trustworthy Internet sources, but it's not always easy to separate them from the rest.

I wonder if I would miss writing so badly that might start a blog just to get it out of my system? That's entirely possible. While construction work provides a distraction and extra money, it doesn't take care of my need for self expression. It's good for the mind to release some of these pent up ideas and to share our common experiences with one another.

While people used to do those things in verse and song or even in person on front porches across this nation, it's now done in cryptic sentences of capital letters via text message and e-mail.

I wonder if anyone will even take the time to read what others are saying in the future. Maybe our little worlds will be so customized to show exactly what we want to see that our eyes will never really be opened to the truth, or even the wide-open possibilities, ideas and thoughts, not to mention new concepts and strange cultures. After all, aren't those the things that truly make life interesting?
 

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