So I finally transitioned into the 21st. century recently when I picked up a smart phone. It's anything but necessary but I can't deny how useful it is. My wife refuses to get one and I understand why, I wouldn't get one for the longest time either. "I don't need one of those things" I kept saying. But in the end realized that owning one wasn't a matter of need, it was more a matter of "How useful is it to me?" Well as it turns out I find I very useful. It's mostly entertainment but there are other things (like the notepad) that have actually been very helpful. If my phone died tomorrow I would certainly miss it but in the end it's not something I can't live without if I had to. Nevertheless I am very glad I have it. Like all technology, it's not something essential but it sure makes life easier.
But not all technology can make that claim. In today's day and age we have everything we need at our fingertips. Food is plentiful, shelter is widely available and relationships are literally a shout away. We can connect to one another in ways never known before in Earth 's history, in many ways we are now the gods we once feared.
And how do we make use of this gift of technology? It was once predicted that the internet would become a place of "higher learning, sophistication and society." A wrong Google search will reveal that the internet is anything but however it's far worse than watching some cat chase naked women over waterfalls. In the palm of everyone's hands is a weapon more powerful than the most powerful weapon ever conceived of by science fiction.
A blog can kill anyone, anywhere. A website can raise a government to power or bring it crashing down. We learned these lessons from the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movements. Indeed our own President owes his career to the device you are reading this on.
So I ask you again, what do you use technology for?