Beach

My recent trip back from London on Saturday got me thinking wistfully about Holidays (side note since buying my flat I haven’t had any time off that hasn’t been filled with DIY).

Join me as I travel back to my youth, to a time of orange squash and honey sandwiches.

Its summertime, schools out and its time for a holiday!

So in we all cram into my folks car:

• My brother and I in the back seats,
• Parents up  front,
• Mum with the map,
• Dad with a steely determination to get to the destination as quickly as possible (and screw the traffic laws)
• Air conditioning was the realm of premium saloons like the S Class etc, so windows open and pray that we don’t get stuck in traffic!

But what entertainment to keep a six and an 8 year old quiet on the journey?

We had few options, stare out the window, read a book, be sick after reading a book or kicking the back seats.

Later on we had access to a Nintendo Gameboy and  an Atari Lynx but the battery of either wasn’t impressive (or in the case of the Lynx horrific, 8 AA batteries drained in under half an hour!!)

Compare that to today’s car journey of today:

• Individual climate control for front and back passengers
• In built Sat nav that detects speed cameras
• And such entertainment (Dvd players, full blown games consoles)

But more importantly we literally have the world on a stick with wireless Internet, with 3g we can update our friends of our progress, play games and keep up to date of everything.

We progress in this swirling mass of 2.4ghz signals constantly pervading our social space, keeping us awake and aware of everything at all times.

I love technology and having the world available to me is very useful but:

If we’re constantly connected, with a permanent on-line presence can we ever say we  really got away from it all?

Is our family’s holiday on the beach lessened as people can tag our photos with their own experiences, thus rendering our holiday a collective experience rather than personal.

Of course other people have climbed that hill, swam that lake, found that cove but that experience is ours and ours alone but until it his the Internet those memories are ours and no one Elses

How much access is too much? Is there a limit to collaboration? Will there be a time when it is no longer possible to get away from it all?

I like the fact that we have the ability to switch off, but in the not too distant future I don’t think we’ll be able to escape the maelstrom that is pervasive technology and with that a small part of ourselves may be lost with it.