A few days ago, I was out at a new client site and I had forgotten to bring my GPS. Usually I’m obsessive about ensuring that I have it with me when I’m going to a new place, but this time I’d forgotten it. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to figure out how to get there. I was a bit nervous without the GPS. It had guided me successfully to so many new places, I wasn’t sure that I could still do it on my own.

So when I started up the car, I pictured the map in my head and started driving not sure if I’d make it to the right place. After it was all said and done, I ended up taking a better (less turns) and quicker route than the one the GPS would have taken me on. My mind still worked and, in fact, I was better without the GPS.

It reminded me of that scene in Star Wars: A New Hope where Luke is flying in the trenches of the Death Star and gets set-up to use his automatic targeting system to fire the critical shot. Obi-Won’s disembodied voice tells him to use the force instead. He is resistant at first. How could he make the shot on his own? But finally he turns off all his electronic gear and nails it.

Our world is so saturated with technology we’re just not used to living without it. We begin to question ourselves. And our own skills are probably weakened from lack of use, but they’re still there.

It reminds of the old debate about the impact that calculators are having on the brains of budding mathematicians. Are we really exercising our brains the same way if we’re just punching numbers into a calculator?

Recently I’ve heard studies of how Google and the internet are changing how we read. People no longer like to dig through and focus on one dense texts. Instead they are being conditioned to jump from one short excerpt to another.

Also, we rarely have to memorize anything anymore now that all of our important information from phone numbers to addresses can be easily stored on our cell phones.

Just tonight the internet was going slow (not off mind you, just slow) and it was like the world had shut down in our house. We couldn’t access our usual sites that had become so routine for us to view without a moments notice.

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and make my living by it, but there is no doubt that it is having a profound impact on us. Some for better and some for worse. It’s probably too early to determine the overall impact as we’re the first truly wired generation.

But I have to think that sometimes it’s good for us to walk away from the computer and try to solve problems on our own. Sometimes it’s important to stop texting and talk to the person in the other room.

Soon we’re going camping with cub scouts and there will be something nice about being unwired for a night.

“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology”

-John Tudor