Using Technology

My middle son's best friends live in another state. He went to school with them before we moved. He now chats with them on the phone for hours a day, plays games with them on the Wii and XBox 360, IMs with them, emails with them, voice chats on the 360 with them, etc.

One of his friends visits over spring break. That friend is also flying in today for a summer visit. Of course we need his flight information in order to pick him up. Transferring that information to us was hard, somehow.

We already know he's flying into Atlanta. The information we need is (1) arrival time (2) flight number (3) city of origin. We don't really need to know the city of origin, but it helps when locating the flight on the Arrivals screen at the airport.

Julia and I figured that it would take one minute to put this information into an email. Quick, easy, saved. They wanted to fax it. I don't have a dedicated fax line, so I would have to set the machine up. The print quality on my cheapo fax machine is not good, either. Not a good idea. Could you email it?

So his family said, "We'll scan it and put it in an email." My son was on the phone with them at the time.

We said, "Just type it into an email." So the friend starts calling the information out over the phone. So I need to stop what I'm doing and write this down? Send an email! No, don't scan it. Just type the information into an email. It is the equivalent of 3 words.

You spend all day communicating over various electronic media with my son, remember? You can use the communication for useful things, not just for yakking about video games.

I am at risk of an electronic aneurysm.