Philip Jong

Last month, Research In Motion suffered an unforeseen system failure that caused an interruption of its email service to all Canadian users of its BlackBerry devices. BlackBerrys are mobile devices widely used among business executives, professionals (including doctors and lawyers), and even politicians. Despite that the service interruption lasted only less than a day, the outage made much news in the mainstream media which reported many users to be suffering from the so-called CrackBerry withdrawal during the service outage. As a longtime avid technology user, I have been mindful not to let myself to grow addicted to using such a device, regardless of the potential great convenience that the device seemingly offers to its users. I believe that we must only use technology to enrich the lives we live but not to let technology dictate instead how our lives are to be lived daily. In this extreme, it is distributing to see that we can grow so attached on such technology, as if it replaces all real forms of human interactions in our desire to communicate. Rather, we must learn to detach ourselves from becoming the slaves of such technology, for otherwise we may find ourselves one day unable and unwilling to live our lives any other way without it.