I have to admit I have become fairly dependent upon technology.

I never considered myself a techno geek. I always had the idea I was more the rugged individualist. I must be changing.

I really didn't think about how technology-dependent I was until earlier this week when I lost my cellular phone.

For two days I was out of contact. It was unnerving.

Things are back to normal now. I found the phone - in a little tray-like depression on the dashboard of my car.

That would seem to be a pretty obvious place but it somehow eluded me nonetheless.

I searched under the seats, in the glove box, in every nook and cranny of my car for two days.

I turned the house upside down. I even looked in the refrigerator and the freezer. Every time I lose something I look for it in the refrigerator and the freezer.

A long time ago, somebody told me to do that. I don't know why. But I continue to check those places for lost items even though I have never found anything there.

My phone is midsized, as cell phones go. If I had one of the credit-card sized ones I would probably lose it all the time.

Losing the phone was an eye-opener, though, because I really missed the thing.

Mainly, I use it for status updates on the kids and their activities after school. My wife keeps track of all that stuff. Since she works later than I do, I get to play taxi driver for the kids. All I have to do is phone in to find out who needs what ride when and where.

When I didn't have the phone, I felt in the dark. I didn't like that "in the dark" feeling.

But I don't like feeling as if I have become technology dependent, either. It's a paradox.

I used to make fun of people with cell phones. Now I am one of those people. (At least I don't have a belt clip. People with belt clip phones look geeky. The belt clip beeper I can understand, but the belt clip phone? It's kind of like a carrying a pocket protector and a half dozen pens.)

I used to make fun of people who spent a lot of time on the Internet, too.

Now I spend about an hour a day checking e-mail and browsing my favorite sites.

I order stuff via the Internet and I subscribe to a couple Internet newsletters.

More technology, more dependence.

Even in my car I have become technology dependent. My car, a 1986 model, has this little computer in it.

It tells the date, time, outside temperature, average miles per hour, average miles per gallon and range per tankful of gas. It also has a timer you can set.

At first, I didn't know how to operate it and it just kind of sat there.

Finally, I figured out how to use it. Then one day I discovered that you could scroll through the display by pushing in on the end of the turn signal.

That really made my day.

So now I know exactly how many miles I have driven since my last fill up and how many miles there are to go before I need to fill up again. I know what kind of mileage I'm getting and I know how fast I'm going as an average.

I fiddle with the thing all the time.

When we go places on the weekend we take our van. It doesn't have a little computer on board.

It bugs me.

I have a hard time driving not knowing my averages. When it comes time to buy a different car I will have to find one that has a little computer in it.

The systems guy here at the newspaper is pretty technology dependent.

That is a bad thing because I end up buying hand-me-down technology from him.

He upgraded his GPS unit, so I bought his old one. (I got a really great deal - antenna and power cable included!)

For the uninitiated, GPS means geosynchronous positioning system, or something like that, I think.

Anyway, this little handheld device looks at satellites and tells me where I am in latitude and longitude. It's amazing. If you have one of these and some fresh batteries, you can never get lost.

Not that I would ever go anyplace where I could get lost, but that's not important.

What's important is that now I can plot my way from Dewart Lake to the office each day. I can mark my progress along the way.

I can compare the data from the GPS unit with the data from my little car computer.

Isn't technology great?

But I think the systems guy has gone too far. He has a laptop. He plugs his new GPS unit into his laptop. On his laptop he has a mapping program with all the streets and roads in it.

He can watch himself drive down the street on the display on his laptop.

That's just ridiculous.

Hmmm. I wonder when he's going to upgrade that laptop. [[In-content Ad]]