Technology: The Crux of Humanity or the Bain of Our Existence?

Once in a while, when I'm having an artistically inspired streak, I like to try to break out the old sound equipment and give it a whirl. I've got a plethora of songs (aka three) in my head that I need to get written down and recorded into real, live sound waves. In a perfect world, I would do this all the time, spending days writing music and recording it and uploading it to myspace and youtube. Then I'd sit back and watch the fans roll in.

Well, this is definitely not a perfect world, and I haven't fully recorded or uploaded one of my songs in years. I've never really recorded and uploaded a song of mine that I'd actually want multitudes of people to hear, either. So today I thought to myself, 'Self, today you're going to record those songs. You owe it to yourself to get your music out there.' It's times like these when I can tell that my self-esteem is way up because I think maybe if I do get them uploaded, people will actually listen. Who knows if they would, all I know is that my 'recording sesh' didn't go quite as planned.

This is where I reach my point. So I'm all set up with my dinky little sound equipment, my keyboard plugged in, and my Sound Forge Studio all set up. It's a primitive way of life, but I've grown used to it. Then I record my first take; a decent run, I think, as I'm about to replay the recorded sound and take a listen. The sound that comes out of the speakers, however, is not exactly anywhere near what I'd call 'decent'. Somewhere between my keyboard, the wires connecting it to my recording equipment, and my computer, the sound has been distorted from grand piano to a scratchy, tinny, rusty sound equivalent to the sound I imagine a cat might make while being dragged behind a four wheeler.

After an hour and a half of readjusting, repositioning, and rebooting, I gave up my quest for fame via cheap recording equipment and myspace, having just wasted precious minutes of my life in a futile pursuit. The incident got me to thinking of how much time humanity wastes not only on using technology, but on fixing it. Murphy's law comes into play whenever booting up an old computer or fiddling with a VCR. Even the new things we buy seem to always malfunction the first time we try to use them. We tinker around, read the instructions, swear and kick, and eventually call customer service, who tell us to do the same thing over again. Things like this have been happening to me ever since I was six, when my mom's Mac flashed me the blue screen of death and turned off for good. I can't imagine what it'd be like to live in a world where I wouldn't have to worry every other minute whether or not my internet connection will last or if my iPhone will freeze up. I also can't imagine the amount of time I've wasted sitting around and messing with technology, only to leave frustrated and bewildered.

I say humanity should go on strike from the technology that has taken up so much of our time. While I will admit that functioning without my internet and iPhone sounds bleak and slightly impossible, I think it would be a noble pursuit for myself or anyone to set down the blackberry, log off of Twitter, close the laptop and just go run through a field or lay in the sun for a while. As for me, I'm taking the less extreme route by shunning my recording equipment until the next time I have a genius bout of inspiration. I'll deal with it then.