Now that I'm 35, I can say with surety that my relationship to technology has taken a turn to the personal. In the last five years, I have been scanned, as well as poked and probed in ways that I can only call egregious, by the finest in cutting edge digital medical technology. My knees have been soothed by ultrasound therapy, my brain scrutinized by a magnetic resonance imager, my colon invaded by fiber optics. Nothing's wrong, of course. As it happens, turning thirty also transforms one into a hypochondriac, though my knees feel much better now.
Doctors have embraced technology, it turns out, more so perhaps than even computer gamers.
Doctors love the latest diagnostic tools and imaging technologies. As patients experiencing these wonders, we become the shock troops of the brave push into the future of high-tech health and the tentative steps into the miscegenation of body and machine. As an unrecanting gadget geek, I find myself drawn into the world of these exotic machines. As bad luck would have it, they are only operated by an exclusive cadre of technicians and specialists. As a computer nerd I understand and empathize with the doctors who rely on them.