technology

I am just finishing my next article for the Fire and EMS Quarterly. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is about. If I did, you wouldn't enjoy it as much when it's published in October. You can read my July article if you want . . . click the link on the side bar, or click here.

Writing always gets me thinking, and the great thing about writing a blog is that you can read it almost as soon as I think it. Good writers taylor their article to the season it will be published in, not the current one. It's hard to get into the mood for Thanksgiving and Halloween when you've barely started enjoying summer, but that's what good writers do. I wrote the July article with a couple feet of snow still on the ground, and hockey season in full swing. I probably should have written about swimming and camping and Michael Jackson . . . but how was I supposed to know that the ice was going to melt and a famous pop singer was going to dominate news headlines for the whole month of July?

Fortunately, hockey is a timeless and seasonless subject, even in July. If you like hockey that is. If you don't . . . well, just read one of my other timeless, seasonless articles.

With modern technology, these worries are gone (except that I blog when I should write for the folks that have deadlines to keep). I can write about Michael Jackson when people are actually thinking about him (not that I want to want to write about Michael Jackson) and I can tell you my summer woes knowing full well you can read them before the lakes freeze.

Technology has it's drawbacks though. In some ways, it has actually increased our call volume. Take the cell phone for example. A lot of calls are phoned in now by folks whizzing by what they think is a crash scene without taking the time to see whether it's really a crash, or just someone stopping to stretch their legs. I wrote more about this syndrome in my April 26 and June 20 posts.

Then there's texting. I see it as the Jekyll and Hyde of technology. Many of my friends put it to good use, saving a small fortune in phone bills and staying connected. But sometimes the technology gets away on you. Click here and here for stories about texting teens that got carried away by compulsive communicating.

I used to get tendonitus from running a piece of technology called a chainsaw for eight or ten hours a day. Now kids get it punching buttons with their thumbs. Times have certainly changed, haven't they?