How can we take a wrong turn these days? How can we discover the twists and turns and back roads of serendipity when the fastest-route box is the default selection on MapQuest or Google Maps? How can we possibly learn anything if Siri and GPI forever prevent us from making any mistakes en route? How can we be found if we’re never lost?And then he comments:
Our obsession with the destination -- with getting there as fast as possible -- all but obliterates the lessons and rewards of the journey, and we wake up one morning to discover that we’ve become prisoners of efficiency. Perfect prisoners to be sure, but prisoners nonetheless. Turns out our only real mistake was not turning off our digital masters while we still had the chance.He describes a trip he made to Newport, R.I., with his girlfriend. While eating, they saw three members of a four-member family with their heads bowed ... and looking at their smart phones. And he ponders the impact of digital technology on his life, and how little he knows about it all, for better or worse.
He concludes with still more answers about how to respond to the imposition of technology on our journeys:
I think wonderment and happiness are basic choices we make as conditions of the journey, things we impose on our own worlds in our own time while our worlds impose conditions of their own, replete with riddles and rhythms we can’t possible fathom. ...For me, Garbl, the destination may be important, but I insist on finding value and joy in the journey. That's life.
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