Happy Campus Technology Day!

Today is our campus's First Annual Technology Day. As luck would have it, it is also the day when the campus is undergoing an inexplicable power blackout. I arrived at a dark workplace at 8, did all I could do without technology until 11 and then headed home to try and meet a writing deadline. At work this morning, the work I needed to do involved a book and a pen. I'm happy to report that both were fully functional in the power outage. We were all smiling and laughing at the irony of not having power to fuel our splendid technology on our inaugural Technology Day. In some ways, today's blackout is an apt reminder of all that technology is and all that it does for us. At the library, for example, there were few people if any who could do their work without a computer. Walking across campus to a (cancelled) meeting, I noticed how silent everything was without the various hums I'd never really noticed before. I heard 3 different kinds of birds chirping, leaves rustling in trees and squirrels sounding their squirrely yawp over the roofs of the world. I watched staff and students going for walks, talking to each other, pointing out the irises in bloom, reading books on benches outside, and generally enjoying this perfect early summer day. In honour of Technology Day, I hope you power off your computer, turn off your cellphone, and, like our pal Walt Whitman urges, lean and loafe at your ease, observe a spear of summer grass. My inner Luddite also urge you to celebrate this particular kind of technology. This video might also be appropriate on a day like today.