The Gambler

Have you ever wondered what caused an addiction whether it be a drug or an afflicition, I mean which is worse the drug or the afflcition. They both can cost a lot of time and money and may be harmful to your health.

I have a simple criteria for most things I do in life - is this task serving myself and my family well, does it provide income, is it a healthy past time, will it make it a better world and is it a relaxing past time. If some thing fails to satisfy these criteria why bother!

Let's break down technology addiction in to my basic criteria for being a worthy past time.

In terms of serving myself and family well: You can argue that it promotes the exchange of ideas and you learn something from it - perhaps - in moderation, but you could also achieve this doing a multitude of other tasks!

Does it provide an income - not relative to the hours committed.

Does it make it a better world - it is hardly feeding the starving millions or illuminating third world poverty! If it finds a cure for anything let me know!

Is it healthy - sitting on your rear end, looking at a relatively small object which physically does not move, in questionably poor artificial light- yeah right!

Other traits common with addicts are threats and emotional black mail, since my first blog I have been subject to this not only from my my wife, but also her friend who is also a techno geek / addict as to when I would blog again.

Please see the attached picture of a pair of addicts in action, so powerful is this perverse past time that my wife's friend had to bring her own computer to our place for a visit. Not only is it weird it is also un-Australian as they were doing this the night of the cricket world cup final!

I know it's a gamble posting this but - they need help!

Who would have thought I would be in the same room as my wife!

It says something of the subliminal brainwashing of technology that I am actually creating my own blog to highlight the addiction of my wife and children to all things technology driven. Given that this is a Friday night and normally I would be doing something far more sensible like watching the AFL on TV, but I just had to get this off my chest.

Seriously I'll give you a bit of a run down of what I am up against - don't laugh if I mispell some of this stuff as I had never heard of most of this stuff six months ago!

My wife Sue has the following:

• Her own Podcast Site.
• Her own Wiki (I was impressed initially because I thought it was a character out of Star Wars).
• Her own Blog.
• She teaches online.
• She teaches how to use PDA's and Mobile Learning.
• She teaches E Learning via virtual classrooms, using software like Elluminate.

She has her own laptop,PDA and video ipod.

She has bloody taught the kids how to use Skype.

She has seconded my eight and twelve year old son's into appearing in a podcast.

My eight year old son creates his own cartoons using the ToonDoo website and my twelve year old son is addicted to playing World of Warcaft on line.

Seriously some of this stuff is pretty cool and can be very good to use - but it has totally taken over. I mean how much can a koala bear!

Sue half the time speaks what I think is a different language to me and speaking itself is a rarity, she is becoming semi nocturnal and tends to go to bed considerably later than most humans due to her addiction.

Sadly she sometimes keeps Skype running without talking to her friend who is on line so that they can be comforted by the sound of them each tapping on a keyboard,it's all very disturbing!

I am sure it will all end in some sort of mutation for mankind!