“Did you pack the dongle?”

The dongle? What kind of thing is a dongle? And why would I pack one?

Dongles, as you probably know, come in various shapes and sizes. (Mine is a thin, sleek metal box about the size of a deck of cards.) They plug into the new lightweight laptops and replicate the necessary plug-in ports that have been eliminated from the new lightweight, thin laptops.

Into the dongles (could there be a song in that?) go the connections needed for a laptop: the external player for CDs/DVDs, the cable that hooks the laptop to a project, flash drives, the wireless chip that operates the slide changer—whatever else the laptop “requires.” Dongles aren’t cheap, but our tech guy “threw one in” after I agreed to take the pricey warranty on my new Macbook—the warranty that promises to replace the computer even if I spill a cup of Earl Grey into it.

Do you travel with a zoo’s worth of electronic apparati? How ever did we ever manage to live before the “absolute need” of such paraphernalia reshaped our daily patterns?

We did do things before computer technology ran rampant, did we not? We organized conferences and festivals, weddings and reunions. Schools and colleges recruited and enrolled students. Theaters sold tickets. Concert halls did too. We ascertained the hours of shops and restaurants without googling. We went to the bank. And rather than futilely try to follow the details of hundreds of acquaintances’ lives, we were content to cherish a fond sense of them in our memories, heartily enjoying the occasional letter or postcard that hit the mailbox. For anyone young today, all of this sounds as archaic as the buggy whip.

I am not a Luddite. But it’s naïve to think that dependence on casings and cables is an unabated blessing. Or to ignore that this level of dependence on technology is affecting our humanity.

A computer hack, as we now know, can shut down an entire industry. Or, potentially, a country.

Meanwhile, the subject of how we manage the impact of technology on our families occupies many of us. One talk I am giving this season at conferences is called “The Digital Dulling of our Children.” The information I present is not the primary benefit of the talk, although it is useful and enlightening for many attending. Rather, the parents and grandparents who attend are seeking a supportive camaraderie in their struggle to determine the right balance of technology in the family’s life.

Those raising children need support to fight the good fight. They are not fighting against technology. They are fighting to domesticate a beast. For some families, the fight means doing whatever it takes to raise their children in a world framed by nature walks, reading books together, singing, dancing, baking and canning, and dinnertime conversation. For others it means radically limiting the time their children encounter the digital world, including turning it into something of an occasional festive experience shared by the family. For still others, it means entering into the digital encounters themselves, especially gaming, so as to keep the material and time devoted under the eye of the parent.

In all cases, it means taking a consciously crafted position. But more importantly, it means the parent has to model the behavior desired. And this is hard. Those of mothering age today have largely been raised with digital technology. There isn’t very much “before-technology” life for them to contemplate. They have to work harder to imagine their way around technology’s lure. The ostensibly good excuses that arise for crafting their days around phones and laptops have to be reevaluated. It isn’t easy.

Always,  when giving this talk, I hear a small gasp upon introducing the term “brexting.” Brexting is a clever name given to a problematic practice where moms occupy themselves fully with texting during breast feeding. Consequently, the ongoing visual connection between the infant and mother is damaged. Information the child would receive from a mother’s face (even if she were reading a book or conversing with a friend) is lost. Lost, too, is the information a mother gains watching the face and body of the child whom she is nurturing.

My purpose in writing this essay is not to stand in blanket judgement. It is to add air to the trumpet of voices raising the alarm. Furthermore, I have the advantage of age. My intellectual and behavioral patterns were formed in a world void of technology’s lure. That is an advantage, trust me.

People are wising up, though. Recent publications on the topic are simultaneously damningly critical, nuanced, and helpfully advisory. Just in the audiences I see, the wisdom of parents is starting to make a difference. As with any worldly promise, there is a good and an evil side. Wielding a double-edged sword is a complex art, but one that can be mastered. No one I encounter is giving up the fight.