My Tech-Wise LifeНамуна

What Is a Tech-Wise Life, Anyway? 

I want to tell you about my childhood. About my “tech-wise” life.

Honestly, I often have a hard time explaining it. Growing up, tech-wise was the sum of a lot of little choices. It might be easiest to describe it by the things my family did without: no TV until I was in middle school, no smartphone until I was sixteen, no screens in sight during family dinners together, and no devices in the car. But tech-wise living was more about the things we did in place of technology. It took a while for me to figure out that there was anything unusual about the way we lived, but it was pretty different from my classmates and peers.

But one of the best—and worst!—things about life is that tiny things really do make a difference. For example, I love making bread, but if it weren’t for a tiny teaspoon or two of yeast, the flour, water, and salt that go into bread dough would resemble more of a very big cracker than soft, warm bread. So here’s my hope: developing small counter-cultural habits might be like yeast. It starts with the tiny actions we take to shape our days. And it grows easier with time.

My dad also partnered with me in writing My Tech-Wise Life. I think you’ll appreciate what he has to say. Imagine someone you respect saying to you:

I love you no matter how you sort out, exactly, how to live in this world stuffed with technology. But I want you to know, that the most important thing is real life—fullness of life, “the life that really is life,” as Paul wrote to his young partner Timothy two thousand years ago.

It’s about growing up to do things that matter in the world, that are deeply worthwhile—and being the kind of people who can actually do something worth doing. And nothing is more deeply worthwhile than love.  —Dad

I hope this week we can figure out what our tech-wise lives should look like. I want us to think together about what tech gives us—and what it takes from us. 

But most of all, I hope you’ll respond because I want you to think about the changes you have the power to make in your own life.

See, it doesn’t make much of a difference if I happen to live in this weird, tech-wise way. But if you join me—if we choose to take charge of the tech in our world—it might just change all of our lives. 

Think about your relationship with tech. What would you like to change?