What does Technology have to do with it?

     Remember when they said computers would do away with paper?
     If that's true, why am I sitting here looking at two cases of copy paper I just bought? Actually, it's two cases, less four reams. Those four reams are in a plastic bag waiting to be toted out to the trash bin so they can be hauled away to our local landfill. And I wonder ... after all the trash from my neighborhood reaches that landfill, and just the act of dumping rips many of the bags open, will the air be filled with swirling 8-1/2 x 11 sheets of paper (printed one side only) soaring ever upward like a kettle of turkey vultures circling in warm air currents, until finally the sky over the landfill looks like a snowstorm that obstinately decided to fall upward instead of down to earth?
     So, here I sit, contemplating technology and how it's helped me as an author ... while my fingertips tap my computer keyboard and the computer waits patiently for me to send this post around the world in ... what ... two seconds? And while my fingers tap out this message, I listen to Michael Buble on an iPhone that's running by magic called WiFi (and those little WiFi lights on something called a Router blink to the beat of the music) ... while I realize that technology has gone so far beyond my understanding ... and for some strange reason, I still try to understand it.
     Well, the easy answer is: technology has made my life as an author possible. I don't think I would have enjoyed, or even participated in, the kind of authorial life that, say, Tolstoy, enjoyed.
     Every day, writing becomes simpler. I can sit at my desktop computer with it's mammoth monitor that makes viewing my work easier on the eyes, and for those who didn't learn to type as long ago as I did (when the typing teacher walked around the room with a ruler to make sure each typist had her wrists fairly rigid, keeping the line between hand and arm nearly straight), well, those poor typists who've developed carpal tunnel syndrome, technology has helped by creating keyboard pads. Not to mention the ergonomic chairs we lucky author-typists sit in.
     I remember the first version of Word I ever used. It ran on a DOS-PC, where the monitor was a green or yellow screen, and to use the word processor required switching 5-inch floppy disks between the two diskette drives because there wasn't room on the 20 megabyte hard drive to load any programs. Windows users don't know how good they've got it. (Okay, you're probably saying, I sound like your father telling you how he used to walk to and from school every day and it was uphill in both directions.)
     Well, when an author has walked those two-directional hills, and today uses Word 2007 on a desktop PC with a hard drive that stores so much stuff it might as well be called a Pantry, that author is likely to think technology is a really, really good thing. Funny, though, this author also has a laptop for those times when the desktop PC is inconvenient (traveling, sitting on the porch at sunset, editing stories while watching Dancing With The Stars on TV), and this author also has a Mini-laptop when the regular-sized laptop is inconvenient (ditto above parenthetical), and this author has also discovered that, in a pinch, small bits of writing can be done on the iPhone Notes App (since it's possible to email those Notes back to any of the above computers).
     Or maybe, when considering how technology has helped me as an author, time and not technology is what I'm really considering. You know what I mean? When an author reaches maturity (and I mean age-wise, not writing-wise), it's just a matter of looking back at where we've come from. Technology-wise, I've come from the Stone Age. And I'm ever so grateful.
     Uh-oh, that's my iPhone beeping me to remind me it's time to get back to work on my novel.