Landrew’s Take on Technology

When you eat Chinese food at the mall for the first time, you feel sort of sick.  The next time, you don’t feel as sick.  If you keep eating Chinese food at the mall, you get used to it and you don’t feel sick at all, just like you’re eating normal food.  Well, think of technology as the opposite of mall Chinese food for your eyes.

By technology, I mean technology with screens.  An mp3 player won’t hurt your eyes, unless someone with really good aim throws one at your eye really hard.  A computer keyboard could only hurt your eyes if a bully made you type up his essay using your eyeballs while the computer teacher isn’t looking.  The bad thing about screens is they can hurt your eyes even if you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing: looking at them.

The proof of this is nerds.  Nerds always hang out on computers doing nerdy things with hundreds of tiny letters and numbers, making them stare at the screen really hard and really close, which hurts their eyes.  That’s why nerds always have really big glasses.  This is actually an example of something that you learn in science in high school called cause and what happens next.

The scary thing is, with the internet being so awesome that you want to be on it all the time, you could be at risk of hurting your eyes and getting big nerd glasses too!  Here’s what you should do to avoid this: go around the internet for a while, but then, for at least an hour everyday, sit at your computer with your eyes closed, click the mouse, and pretend to be on the internet!  And if you get bored clicking around your favorite real sites, you can make up sites in your head!  There’s no limit to the internet in your imagination!

This might seem unfair.  You might be like, “Why have eyes if I can’t even use them?”  Well remember, eyes are good for other stuff besides technology with screens, like driving or noticing when there’s a door to open before trying to walk through a doorway.

The problem is that eyes are weak.   Your eyes are like technology because sometimes new stuff comes out that they doesn’t work with.  But your eyes aren’t like technology because you can’t buy sweet upgraded eyes to make your them work with new stuff.  There is actually only one kind of eye-upgrade you can get and it’s glass eyes, but those are only upgrades for people who start out not having any eyes at all.  For those of us with normal eyes, glass eyes are a downgrade.

So the only thing we can do to help our eyes is be careful and I don’t just mean when it comes to technology.  There is other stuff that hurts your eyes too!  For instance, the sun makes it light outside so that you can use your eyes better, but if you use your eyes to look at the sun for hours straight, it might start to get dark all of the time for you.  That’s why they sell sunglasses at the drug store: because they’re healthy!