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Joe Vallin
Dr. E
WR 13300
12 September 2014
A Pixelated Paradox
My hand quickly shoots up to clear the invisible net that has just now wrapped around
my face. Momentarily, I am blinded as I free myself from these silky strands. Trail runs are one
of my favorite training activities but they inevitably involve those annoying spider webs. I
continue on beating the trails with a soft cadence and quickly glance back at the small glowing
tile on my wrist. Immediately I accelerate my pace as I realize how much Ive slowed down.
Pacing is everything. And without my trusty GPS watch Id be woefully inefficient. Right? I mean
thats the whole point. A small screen on my wrist is the difference between a Personal record
and a flop, between a constructive training run and a haphazard jog. As I finish my run, my eyes
steal one last glance at my digitized pace. I should be prepared to run at this pace at my race
next week. Or will I? Do I really know the pace? Do I know it in my legs? Down to my toes? In
fact I probably dont. If I were without my watch it would be very hard to match the necessary
pace and I would fall off track of my goal time. Although GPS technology allows me to visually
see my pace, its not ingrained in my brain. Not replicable on my own. And thus my training is
tossed back and forth between the convenience of technology and the long-term payout of old
school training. A paradox, really.
This tension is much the same with modern day communication and sociality. I
remember way back in fifth grade when I finally got the computer game for which I had been
pining. Oh, it was fascinating. I remember marching down to the home office every day and
dancing my fingers across the keyboard. My body fastened to the chair, eyes glued to a square
foot pane of glass for one hour straight. Soon my brothers and even my dad joined in. My dad
got so carried away one night that the morning bird melodies finally pulled him away from the

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pixels. My mother soon saw where this was going and implemented the dreaded screen time
rule. No more than an hour and a half each day. I still remember the stern, unyielding look on
moms face each time she had to lay the hammer down when we lost track of time. Those times
when her question, How long have you been on? were answered with an, uhhhhh. You could
see in her eyes there was no way of escaping. You see, to her the glass cube was something
entirely different. It was a miscalculated priority. A subtraction from academic duty and time
spent with the family. Yes, technology was entertaining. But it could also become deceptively
addicting, like a spider web you didnt know was there. Although computer games seemed more
exciting at the time, they tended to draw us apart rather than together.
This same technology tension reappeared not two months ago. I was coming back from a
road trip when the screen on my cell phone suddenly went black. My eyes brightened. Now I
could finally get a new smartphone instead of my oldfangled slider. Several days later found me
perusing the numerous racks of streamlined, elegant smartphones at the local cell phone store.
Within the next few days I had acquainted myself with my new power tool. With this longawaited piece of ingenuity I would be well prepared for the complexity of college life:
organizationally, academically, and most importantly socially. However, as I soon found out, the
social aspect easily shoved aside the others. I would whip out my smartphone to perform some
ordinary task like web-browsing or skimming my to-do list, and my eyes would casually catch a
recent text message or facebook notification. And then boom, I would be stuck in place while
this small screen would suck up to twenty minutes of my time. Then I would forget what I had
intended to do in the first place and a quarter hour of my time would be lost into cyberspace.
Ahh! It started to disgust me - the subtle power of this slim slice of glass. I thought I had a device
with some fascinating capabilities, yet social distraction was pushing these possibilities out of
my mind.
So, smartphones, computer games, and GPS watches: devices meant to enhance life, yet
can so easily limit its vibrancy. Nowadays, when I hit the trails I try to leave the watch behind. I

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run just for the beauty of it. The beauty of the breeze in my hair, the quiet rustle of the leaves
and the excitement of finally doging those nasty webs.