Modern Marvels

Today, I want to express a few personal thoughts about modern technology.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know everything I should about today's technology. I have friends who do, and when I have questions I turn to them for answers. Sometimes they have them. And sometimes they don't.

Yesterday, I experienced some problems accessing some of the websites that I like to access. And I kept trying to post a comment on a friend's blog, but he never received it. I spoke, via e-mail, with one of my friends who frequently has the answers I need. He told me that web servers have been under a lot of stress lately. Perhaps (and this is my speculation, not his) it has something to do with all the internet traffic that surrounded the inauguration on Tuesday.

Today those problems seem to have cleared up. But it underscores a point I want to make.

Modern technology is not perfect. But it makes so many things possible today that weren't possible even a few years ago.

For example, my father, my brother and I were all devastated when my mother died in a flash flood in 1995. At that time, the internet was still in its infancy — if one were to go back in time and look at what was available then and compare it to what is available today, I think the word "primitive" would come to mind.

And, when the year 2022 rolls around, what is available today will seem just as primitive to people of that time.

My mother never had personal e-mail to use to contact faraway friends. She did have a fax machine, and she used it all the time to send messages to local friends — and she sometimes faxed messages to me. I lived about 200 miles away from her and, at the time, I also had a fax machine.

I know she would have loved e-mail. She liked to compare faxing to "passing notes in school." Today, I suppose the paperless approach has entered the classroom and, instead of passing notes, today's students "text" one another.

But I digress.

As I say, when my mother died, it was a devastating experience for my family. I didn't have an internet connection at the time and, while I did have a computer that I used for some word processing tasks, I still prepared most of my personal documents on an electric typewriter. I couldn't send e-mails to distant friends or search the internet to locate friends with whom I had lost touch. And I certainly couldn't use the internet as an outlet for my grief.

I think I went online the following year, and I found something of an outlet for my lingering grief in chatrooms, conversing with strangers. That helped, but it left a residue of grief that never had an outlet — until recently, when I began to explore the possibility of creating a memorial website to my mother.

I found a host that provides free webspace for such a memorial. It allows me to post pictures and write my thoughts. I can share the link with friends and family members, and it gives them a place to go to see my mother's pictures and reflect on their own memories of how she influenced their lives. They can sign a guestbook. They can even contribute their own pictures.

It was an emotional experience for me, but I know that creating that website has had a cleansing influence on me. And, from the feedback I've received from others, it has had the same influence on them. One of my dear friends, Liebe, looked upon my mother as a mother figure of her own. When she had seen the site, she remarked, "It feels like she just died yesterday." And she said she was glad I had done it because she's been thinking of doing something similar in memory of her father, who died last summer.

That's a way that the internet helps people — beyond giving them a convenient place to shop or look for jobs or a place to live (or, in its less admirable mode, as a provider of pornography).

Another recent discovery is the Facebook website. An old friend of mine recommended it to me by e-mail, so I signed up for it and was amazed at how many people saw my name and contacted me. It has re-connected me with many old friends in just a few days. I had heard of Facebook before, but I tended to dismiss it as a social and dating site. I've been pleasantly surprised to discover that it is much more than that.

I'm not a particularly religious person, but I have to say that I feel richly blessed to have these friends back in my life. And it is something that probably never would have been possible if not for the internet.

When my father (who is 79 now) first decided to go online a dozen years ago, I told him that the internet's websites were like a bookstore. You will find shelves and shelves of books in a bookstore, I told him, and, although much of it is not worth your time or money, there are a few nuggets that are worth finding if you look hard enough.

My recent experiences confirm that I was right.