Enhancing Our Habits

Before I begin today’s entry, I just want to say that I am sorry for updating so sparingly. This semester has been quite busy and updating this blog has fallen to the wayside. This does not mean, however, that I have not been thinking about it as I have used my iPad this semester. In fact, I have discovered some interesting things about technology and its place in society as I used my iPad all semester. I will try to make an entry about each discovery because each of them deserves to be looked at in greater depth.

The first thing I had slowly noticed by using my iPad is that technology enhances the things we already do. This sounds like a simple and obvious statement, but prior to this I had never really thought about technology in this manner. I have always felt that technology has a way of revolutionizing our lives and that as technology evolves we evolve. I am not denying that technology certainly does this, but at the same time there are things about us as humans that technology will have a hard time altering.

For example, one of my favorite hobbies is baking. No matter where I am or whom I am with, I am always ready and willing to bake. My favorite memories include baking at 2am with my sister and friend. As we baked, we had a wonderful time, but we began to have problems in our method. Cooking from cookbooks and printed out recipes could only take us so far. For starters, by the end of our baking sessions, our recipes were dirty and illegible due to us touching it with battered up and greasy hands. Perhaps we should have been more careful with how we handled the recipe but this did not correlate with what we were trying to accomplish, a fun and casual baking experience.

Eventually we stepped up to using a laptop and more recently my iPad. The great thing about using an iPad is that not only will it be more resistant to staining/damage, its Internet capabilities enhances our cooking. My favorite way to access recipes is through cooking-specific websites and blogs. With a few taps I can retrieve a multitude of new recipes from virtually anywhere on the planet. This is further enhanced because of the user-oriented nature of the Internet. Along with just a recipe, I can read reviews as well as potential substitutions and variations of the same dish. If I am stuck on a recipe’s method, I can also search through further blogs or look at videos on Youtube that could teach me the step seamlessly as I prepare the ingredients.

In the end, however, although my iPad enhanced my baking, it did not change my relationship with baking. I still like to bake and will do so readily. The iPad did not change this fact. The iPad did not also make me want to bake more than usual or in a completely different manner. Technology in this case only enhanced my habits.