I have been using my computer on battery because the power has been off here for over five hours. I’m vacationing in cottage country in Ontario, Canada, and there was a wind storm last night. With the exception of our neighbour’s generator humming away in the background, it’s pretty quiet. I like the short-term feeling that we are self-reliant.

Hopefully I’ll be able to dial in and send this article.

Last night I was enjoying a game of Titan Quest, the demo version from a Maximum PC CD. With the exception of having to constantly reconfigure your weapons and other items so they “fit” in your sack, the graphics and game play on Titan Quest are exceptional. Today we are just enjoying a few analogue games, and foregoing packing sacks because the weather is not cooperating for a hiking trip.

I know I discussed being without the Internet and TV in my last article, but this time Mother Nature has upped the ante. I am supposed to be writing about life with technology, not without it. This experience has brought about some philosophical ponderings about our society’s reliance on technology to do just about everything from writing articles to socializing.

I remember in the sixties and seventies a very different (I didn’t say better) social experience. We would come up to the cottage and, without emails and cell phones, get together in the “pit” as if it had all been arranged by a party planner.

Oh no, there goes my low battery warning. We’ll talk when the power comes back on …

9:45 p.m., and the power is back on. I’ve enjoyed the day, cooking dinner on the wood stove, and sitting around to just talk with my family when it got too dark to do anything else. We went to bed early, but the lamp at the side of my bed was on when the power was restored.

This all brings up the subject that I touched on in my last article. There I talked about how our desire for entertainment has fuelled the development of new technologies. I mentioned that technology is useful in many ways, but didn’t explore that angle. Being in the middle of nowhere during a blackout brings to light just how much we rely on technology in our daily life.

Every one, save the most recluse hermit, uses some sort of modern convenience. I heard a story once, about a grandmother and a granddaughter being asked a simple question: if they could only have one modern convenience, which would that be. The granddaughter was the first to be asked. After thinking about the question for a while, she finally said she could not live without a refrigerator. Then the grandmother was asked, but before the interviewing got the whole question out she confidently replied “running water.”

After hauling water from the lake, I agree with the grandmother. A tap is a nice thing to turn on for everything from washing hands to washing dishes. Running water is definitely a useful invention.

Thirteen hours of no electricity starts to cause meat to spoil, and we had to cook some meat we were keeping for later in the week. Therefore a refrigerator is my second choice, followed by a stove and oven (due to the fact we missed our Sunday-morning tradition of pancakes).

A battery powered radio kept us informed a bit, but I preferred to have that turned off. Electric lights comes in there as a priority at some point, finally followed by the phone and computers.

Sounds like a hierarchy of needs, with the computer being introduced when all other needs have been met.

So, when we talk about life with technology, we are talking about life with everything from running water to running accessories such as an iPod or wrist watch that connects to your heart and computer.

All of which, after my experience, I am convinced we can live without. These inventions just make life easier and more enjoyable, and without them we are able to have our basic needs met.

Back when I was a kid, a cottage was a place that didn’t have electricity and water was pumped by hand. Dog-eared comic books and novels, not remote controls, covered the couch. A good story was often finished by the light of a candle or a coal-oil lamp.

Friends we made at the cottage were there on the weekend, no emailing necessary. We just met at the sand pit without having to text message, email, or even phone. Somebody knew why someone else wasn’t there that weekend, and everybody had stories to tell. That was our social life, and Friday night was all we needed to make plans for the weekend.

Today, our social life takes on a different form, much of which is over the Internet. We are part of a growing community of on-line friends and a shrinking world of mixed cultures. The need to meet at the pit has been replaced by the need to be connected all the time. We don’t meet face-to-face much any more–which is an observation, not a comment on society.

So, where running water fulfills a basic need, what need does a computer and the Internet fill? Certainly not a necessity for life–food and shelter (although my Pentium 4 laptop provides heat).

You may say to yourself, or you may be yelling at me, that you really need the computer for a lot of things, like talking to your friends, keeping in touch with business clients, using Visio to manage internal processes, or writing an article (I’m saying that to myself). You may be getting sick at the thought of having to do your financials by hand. You may even be red-faced because you cannot imagine planning a party without email.

The graphics on Titan Quest were nice, but I discovered that I needed some quality time with my kids more than I needed to battle mythical beasts. We had fun going to the beach together for water, and got closer playing a “to the death” game of Crazy Eights.

Yes, it would have been nice to have running water, unspoiled meat, pancakes, and my article submitted on time, but other things were more needful.