In the name of progress...

Technology. It now rules our lives. Can you remember what life was like before computers, video games and cell phones? I can and I'm not that old. Just 28. And I know the generation that came after me has no idea. They can't remember a time without it. They have intimate text relationships with each other. Texting sweet nothings to each other in between Facebook status updates and texting their friends.

My smartphone has made my life easier. I'm not sure I could do my work efficiently without it, but at what cost to myself. My hours of alone time have dwindled with the advent of e-mails and Internet readily available on my phone. The swishing sound that alerts me, makes my ears perk up, and no matter how hard I try to fight the inkling, I just can't help but slide my shaking, excited finger across my touchscreen and check to see who wants to talk to me.

Usually it's work. Or something that could lead to work. Or a friend who just sent me a picture of their food, a funny sign or some gross forward I really don't want to look at. Infiltrating my quiet solitude with buzz words and the need to communicate with people through a lit-up screen that I can type on.

If it doesn't swish, buzz or sing to me, I wonder why. Does nobody want to speak to me? And then when I enter a world without cell service, I often breath a sigh of relief. For real it will be quiet, just me and whoever I'm with. No cell phones going off at dinner tables, answered at dinner tables, talked on for the whole meal at dinner tables.

But it seems harder to find those areas that don't have cell service. The North Fork is a blessed relief. You can actually talk to each other, have a conversation without the shrill interruption of someone in another city who just had to tell you what they ate.

I went to the woods this weekend hoping for the same relief. To a little lake I like because no one is ever there and it's quiet, seven miles down a Forest Service road from the Swan highway. Much to my surprise, my cell phone started ringing, singing, swishing and buzzing because my reception was better at that lake than it was on the highway.

And much to my chagrin, I checked my messages and called people back. I am in charge of my own destiny, and I just can't help myself. It's like a disease that has infected my brain.

So as much as I think I can, I don't really know if I could go back. But sometimes the headache that it brings makes me want to throw it all out the window and run for the hills. It seems like when you really need the computer to work, it doesn't. And when you really don't want to answer your cell phone, you feel like you have to anyway. And when someone is texting you and you call them, they don't pick up the phone.

And Facebook, I am just as guilty as the next person. In my fleeting moments of boredom, I just can't help myself. But it often makes me look toward the future and ask if technology is really propelling us forward or just causing us to digress.

Camillia Lanham is the summer intern for the Hungry Horse News.