How Technology Dictates my Daily Routine

The Hell that is notifications

Every morning after my multiple alarms go off and my phone wishes me good morning and tells me how very cold it is outside. Then maybe I will get twenty seconds of silence before my phone starts buzzing with activity.

Notifications from my phone and from my computer have become the bane of my existence. Many of the notifications are from different applications from my phone.

The many Birthday notifications from Facebook, the endless notifications from Twitter that appear on the hour every hour. Occasionally the odd message from former co-workers wondering if I’m still alive in this pandemic era.

In this day and age, notifications are a way for apps on the phone to get any traction. For me, I have always had a pet peeve over that red circle above the apps when there are notifications. I absolutely loathe when I see multiple red circles on my screen. This means that even with the many times I dismiss notifications on the lock screen of my phone, they eventually complete their job, regardless.

According to my many notifications, it demands that I practice French, have an hour of lessons during the week, and also that I check out my subscriptions on YouTube or try some recipes on Tasty. Or the endless notifications from Tumblr, DoorDash, and Emoji Blitz, all notifications I use the least. I even occasionally get notifications from 8Fit back when I used to use this app in particular to exercise.

What brings us to the point of letting technology dictate our lives

Aren’t we just proving all those Sci-Fi authors and films right when they said robots and technology were going to get us first? You know, before the apes become sentient and decide to overthrow us as the top of the food chain?

That aside, in this day and age, we have our phones declaring our tasks for the day. Talking GPS’s letting us know where and how to drive, Alexa and Google Home telling or answering questions we ask for it. Or video-calling replacing office settings and family gatherings.

The COVID-19 Pandemic has made us even more used to depending on Technology than ever before. If this whole year had been a movie, there might be some evil mastermind twirling his mustache and smiling at all the people depending on technology than ever before.

I remember a time when daily planners and Rolodex’s were the things we used to figure out all the million things we needed to accomplish on every given day. Where when we wanted to figure something out we would read books, research things in the library. The good old-fashioned days. Also known as when I was in Middle school and High school. Before the rise of personal laptops and tablets.

The internet brought so much knowledge to our fingertips. Every time the internet or the social media gods that create a new app or program to make our lives a better place, they chip away at our more traditional ways of doing things. Now there are many children who instead of learning the old-fashioned way of education via books and notebooks.

Now there are five-year-olds on phones and tablets. Which is a shame, with so many people leaning towards technology the days of people looking towards old English authors and even older musicians as role models and eventually the role models of the future will be the people creating the apps that are making traditions and history a thing of an older age.