"Vanished Technology"
September 27, 2001, 12:24 a.m.

This is an If...Project Collaboration entry for September, 2001

If all modern-day technology were to suddenly vanish (the Internet, computers, TV, CDs, cameras, etc.), how strongly would your life be impacted? What steps would you personally take to redefine your life in a non-technological society?

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If all modern-day technology were to suddenly vanish. I'd cry. I would miss my PC, internet access, the ability to just pick up the phone and call someone, cable TV and driving my car. My laundry would be harder to do, I would need to strengthen different sets of muscles. I would have to make sure I didn't get sick and I'd have to rely on nature's resources for their healing powers. I would have to learn a different way of taking care of my hair, my teeth and my skin. I would have to rely on news from passing travelers or a pony express system. I wouldn't know what was going on in the world. I would have to make my own music or find others making their own music too.

Storytelling would become an even greater art than it is now and being a bard would be a decent living. The world would become large once again. We would go back to a simpler but harder lifestyle.

And then I think about my sister who lives in the country with no running water. No car. No amenities. She has jerry-rigged electricty and an old television set that only receives one channel from the nearest big town. She has a phone line now because her daughter set it up for her. She has to lug water into the house from the cistern and cannot drill a well or pump water from the ground because it is gypsum water and just not good since gypsum is the mineral used to make plaster. She has no toilet, no shower, no bathtub, no washer, no dryer. She has a stove but no oven.

Even so, she has a computer and she has internet access because our family gave it to her so that we could keep in touch. She makes little money off the internet and she makes a few dollars by walking to the local church and cleaning it on Saturdays. The land is tough yet when conditions are right, she is able to grow a little food but exists pretty much on $30 a week.

She has tons of cats and several dogs. She is happy. She is living a harder but simpler life and yet in the face of all these technological advances, she yearns not to be left behind. Now that she has her computer, she can keep up with the news and the rest of the world.

So I see the life that my sister has carved out for herself. I see her independence from all the different technologies that have hooked into us and that hold us fast to them for the sake of modern convenience.

I see my sister's life and I know that it could be done. She is much stronger than I, but I know that I could do it...that I could adapt to a world with no technological resources or advances if I had to. Make no bones about it though - I wouldn't want to! Yet knowing what we had, and knowing what was possible, I would know that it would not take long to rebuild our technology and perhaps even have it greater than it is today.

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My sister, working the land.