AUGUST 11, 2008

Technology Affects Everyday Lives More

Last week, my family and I went away on a much needed vacation. Last summer I had undergone a hip joint replacement and stuck pretty much close to home. Travel these days is nowhere what it used to be, and it's probably more stressful because we end up making it so. I didn't vacate much because I brought along my cell phone and one of our daughters brought along her laptop computer.

But there is so much lag time at the airports nowadays it is good to have some sort of distraction to help ease the tension of the wait. It actually takes me longer to get through airport security than the rest of my family even though I have a plastic card in my wallet that says that this implant in my hip may activate a metal detection device. And indeed it does, but the card means nothing to airport security, as I was immediately shuffled off to another area to get a more thorough scanning and patting down.

After all the delays and bouncing around airports, we finally made our destination 900 miles away to a vacation beach house on the Atlantic Ocean. I am totally in awe of the immensity of Lake Ontario when I drive from Buffalo to Syracuse and realize that I'm on the shores of Lake Erie, but when I got to this ocean and I asked what is on the other side of this, and someone said Africa, it blew me away. Yes, we all are connected in some way by water and by all the mysteries of the air waves.

One of the newer technological devices that I got to experience was this satellite navigational system that you can plug into an automobile's cigarette lighter outlet – a small, innovative miracle that will probably make road maps obsolete. And then, all you have to do is plug in your destination and a voice comes over loud and clear to tell you when to go straight and when to turn and if you happen not to be listening it will recalculate and take you this way and that way until you get back on track.

With all this technology out there, I always felt that I was only a few clicks away from the information highway. I was able to get my emails from the computer. I set up a few appointments via the cell phone and I found out on national television that Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown designated Woodside Avenue as Tim Russert Way. And one of the appointments I made via my cell phone was to meet this Tuesday with a search consultant from Dallas to assist ECMC do a national search and recruit a candidate for CEO.

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