In the past few years, technology has advanced at a pace unseen by any other industry, and it's starting to cause problems. After realizing that most of my life is dominated by technology, I decided to take initiative to reduce my time on technology. I have found that, personally, my relationships have degraded over the past few years due to my computer usage. In my everyday life at school & at home, I feel as if I personally spend too much time on my computer, which is a tangible resource, and subsequently I don’t spend enough time valuing intangible resources, like relationships with friends and family, I “follow the grain” by not valuing the intangible, which is something I’d like to break.

I chose to alienate myself from ALL technology for one weekend to see if any change would have been made in my attitude towards technology usage. First of all, I chose to do my action based on the first EU from the resources unit, which was: “Some people tend to over-value tangible resources (such as money, labor, people, and land) and undervalue intangible resources (such as time, experience, education, and relationships).” I chose this EU, because I self-identified as one who spends most of their time focusing on tangible resources, and not one who values intangible resources. I wanted to try to challenge myself by removing the most prominent tangible resource in my life, technology. By removing this time consuming distraction from my life, I hypothesised that the quality of my relationships and valuations of intangible resources would improve. The way I adapted my EU to fit my lifestyle, as aforementioned, was by removing all technology from my life including: my Mac, my Linux, my iPhone, my TV, and my iPad. All of the listed technologies are in use every day, for example: I use my Mac at school and to do homework, I use my Linux computer to program and do web design, I use my iPhone to communicate with friends and family, some of which are in the room right next to me, and I use my TV to watch the news every day. I knew tackling this would be hard, but I wanted to give it a shot, for I wanted to prove to myself, and to my family that I was not indeed a “Lost Cause.” The thinking behind this idea involved me thinking, “What is destroying my life, and my relationships with friends and family?” I had concluded that the single most distracting portion of my life was my technology use. After realizing my “Kryptonite,” I hypothesized a way to solve it. After this hypothesis, I set a date to begin and end the experiment. The portion of time was Memorial Day Weekend, a 3 day weekend in which I had a fairly low amount of homework. I decided to start by giving all of my electronics: my Phone, my Laptops, and my Tablet, to my father for safe keeping. The weekend seemingly felt like outdoor ed, where we forcefully give up our electronics to work on bettering our relationships with our friends and those in our advisor group. I thoroughly believed that my relationship with my father and his girlfriend could be greatly improved my by removal of technology from my life. Additionally, I should be able to minimize my cellphone usage throughout the day after I become aware of the number of times I use my cellphone per day. On the first day, I had a slight bit of regret for giving up my technology, but I chose not to falter, because that would have amounted in failure, and I don’t want to fail! Coming out of the Memorial Day weekend I felt a stronger bond with my father and his girlfriend. I also felt as if my dependency on technology had drastically reduced. Specifically, I relied less on my phone than ever before, I currently only take it out when I need to, not just when it’s a way to escape reality in a situation I don’t feel comfortable with. As for my computer usage, I learned to rely far less on it, and even while I may still use it, I use it less to do things such as programming, especially when I have other, more important, work to be doing such as school work. A minor, yet interesting result of my behavior, was that I had so much time to do fun, exciting things, I even started to work out again! I realized that my computer usage was unhealthy, and causing me to start drifting towards obesity, so I took initiative by running from my house to Del Cerro Park, a 1 mile run, and while nominal, I learned that I’ve always had it in me. Some key learnings from my entire experience are that technology is a necessity, not a required item, and that intangible resources are fairly easy to gain and maintain if one gives up their tangible resources. Specifically, technology is far from a necessity, and the fact that some companies such a Facebook (https://internet.org/) are pushing for technology for all people frightens me. While some people that have no access to the internet, or other technologies may lack a certain experience, we are losing a more trivial experience, relationships and family. This will cause our subsequent generations to lose a sense of family that was far more prevalent in the earlier times. Truly, this provides evidence that not only myself, but most of upper-middle class America will face the problem of overvaluing tangible resources, and undervaluing intangible ones, unless change is made for the better.
In conclusion, my usage of technology caused me to overvalue tangible resources, and undervalue intangible resources. Due to my self-alienation of technology for the 3 days, I made a self-realization that our generation isn’t going to gain that valuation of family that was prevalent in previous generations, and much rather, we will start losing all of our familial ties that were respected so much previously. However, there is hope for the future generations if technology usage is cut off, but at this point, if no changes are being made, the future generations will be a lost cause.