Some friends and me are going camping this weekend and as we were preparing it struck me just how much technology has invaded our lives. We are going to a camp, not a camping ground so some of that is because of the location, but not all of it. There are certain technologies no one would even consider leaving behind.

The cell phone is the most obvious. There was once a point where going camping meant that you were isolated from the world. (There was once a time when going to the bank, or a restaurant or the movies also meant you were isolated from the world but that is a different point).There is something good and healthy about being unreachable occasionally, but the very idea makes most people uncomfortable.

The MP3 player is the next on the list. The truth is that I probably won't have time to listen to it much during the weekend, there is simply too much going on, but I still have it charging so that its battery will last through as much of the weekend as possible.

The Internet in the final step. There is some type of draft happening this weekend and they want to be able to see what happens but they pay for it all the time. Now, I love the Internet, use it all the time, but I think I can safely go  a weekend without being tethered to it.

None of this is bad. I like all the technologies that I am taking with me, but I can imagine the same trip in a few decades when the option to leave behind the technology has become even less of an option. It seems like it will only be a matter of time before computers that interact directly with the human brain emerge, that cell phones get put directly into the ears and we begin to replace body parts with ones that work better and all these things will be good, but they are also going to make escape even for a few hours impossible and humans need to occasionally escape.