It's Hard Without a Debit Card

It was never easy keeping track of everything at once: your appointments, maybe your kids if you have any, your money, your family, friends, birthdays, even the days of the week can slip us by at times. It's especially hard for someone like me who has terrible memory loss and can't even remember my age when being asked at the liquor store. I'm just kidding(no I'm not) but for real, there's no denying I need constant assistance to accomplish everything I need to get done. There's just one problem: I'm a HUGE technophobe. I don't trust the new robots, as I like to address anything with a screen, with anything pertaining to me or anything I consider personal.

That being said, it took a lot to get me to set up something as simple as Google Pay. I know, I know, it's "protected" by laws and all that good stuff but anything can be hacked. I don't know how to do any of that but I'm sure there's someone out there who does and believe me when I say I would be embarrassed if a hacker saw what I was working with. They might actually hack some money into my account. We definitely don't need THAT happening!

Anyway, I felt it was a necessary move being that, as I stated above, my memory is completely shot and I'm constantly forgetting my debit card at home. It's extremely frustrating to be in a store for an hour at the least, wait in line for another 15-30mins, just to get to the cashier and realize all that precious time out of my life was in vain. What's worse is that I have to blame myself for it. Thus, I linked my card to my Google account which, in that statement alone, sounds terrifying enough.

I've obviously found it helpful on the days my brain forgot to wake up but I still worry about websites or outside users hacking and tracking my activity or payment methods. I don't want to admit that it is indeed handy because I want an excuse to eliminate this robot trick from my everyday life but I honestly just can't trust myself like that, yet.

Another Google function that I've unfortunately found to be helpful is Google Notes. Yes, my own brain is the reason I have to rely so much on my digital enemy. Everything goes on that app, there's no way around it. Leaving sticky notes have proved to be futile as habituation kicks in and I forget they're even there. Or the marvelous moment when I do see it and forget to take it with me and let me be honest enough to say that I have way too many pictures on my phone to be able to find one of my notes. These all being the reason I have(almost) no choice but to jot everything down in my phone. I feel like it's way too accessible to be a good thing.

All in all, I'm pretty much still on the fence about it. I'm very much so against the new age era of technology because I do feel it devalues human life and diminishes the good things we have around us. People, especially children, don't value nature anymore or explore the outdoors on the hot, summer days like we used to. Things simply are not the same and it saddens me to see all my childhood landmarks coming down for a screen ad or billboard for a new phone or other piece of technology. Life in itself is way too different for my liking.

These doubtful feelings coupled with the convenience of the technology I do possess leave me in a limbo of hating and loving it. Where do I stand? I don't know, let me ask Google and I may have an answer within a couple seconds unless it already knew what I was going to say.

One other thing I've found to be super cool about everything becoming digitalized are the departure boards at the train stations. I'm from New York and one thing we can all agree on is that the MTA(public transportation) really sucks. They're always late, stuck in a tunnel somewhere or they may even stop running altogether. It used to be close to impossible to figure out when your train was coming, if at all, but two devices made that less of a struggle: the departure screens and the cellphone(surprise).

The screens display the amount of time we have to wait for the next train or simply says "Delay" when there is a delay. You can also check the time of arrival on the website. However, these both aren't always correct which leaves room for a LOT of frustration. There are some technology that I find myself to be grateful for such as the ones I stated above but I also know I'm still not looking forward to where these things are taking us in human nature.

I have two children who I know will have to learn how to use a computer but at the same time, I don't want them to be used to the idea or have it be normalized in their lives. They're too susceptible to becoming addicted to it, which many studies have shown.

I definitely do want life to be a little easier(at least as far as living in the city goes) but I still don't want this to become normalized. I'm definitely comfortable with putting in more laborious work to get what I need or accomplish a task but sometimes it is a lot more convenient either for time and/or efficiency to have a robot help you instead. These longtime issues have been solved by a simple device but how far will it go? When will it stop and will there be huge consequences for not using critical thinking for every day tasks and interaction being that we would have gotten used to a machine completing the tasks for us?

I'm not sure but I do know one thing: I can control what I do in my life. I'm just not sure how I feel about it becoming apart of our lifestyles. Google Pay does come in clutch, though.