Snow Melt

Technology: Living with it and without it

The February 7, 2013 for "Blogging Circle of Friends Prompt Forum"  is
What technological device could you not live without?

Technology
is a blessing and a pain
like walking barefoot in the rain.

The one piece of technology I couldn't live without is an indoor toilet. Now I know there are many people who don't consider this a form of technology, but these people have never used an outdoor toilet. They have never had to get up in the middle of a cold winter's night, walked out their backdoor and through the snow to use the toilet. My grandmother had to do this when she was growing up in the late 1800s. I've used an outhouse myself, not in the middle of a snowy winter night, but the experience was almost as bad.

Outhouses smell bad and they attract creatures with six and eight legs. I could survive without any other piece of technology, after all I grew up without computers and cell phones. I consider these forms of technology wonderful and great things to have, but I could handle not having them. However, I'm not sure I could handle not having an indoor toilet; at least, not at 66. I could deal with having to share a toilet with a group of people. I could deal with having to walk down the hall to use a shared toilet, but I don't think I could handle not having an indoor toilet.

Thought of the Day: "The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human" --John Naisbitt