What Technology Accidentally Gave Us Back

We spend a lot of time talking about the impending impacts of technology on our lives. Most of the conversation centers on loss. Loss of privacy. Loss of boundaries. Loss of the ability to simply exist without being observed, recorded, or analyzed. Those concerns are not manufactured, and they are not exaggerated. They are real, and they deserve serious attention.

Technology is no longer something that is coming. It is already here, embedded into the fabric of everyday life. Cameras are everywhere. Drones hover overhead. Algorithms quietly capture moments we never consciously agreed to document. The default posture most of us take toward this reality is skepticism, and often rightly so.

Still, every once in a while, technology gives something back. Not because it was designed to, but almost accidentally. And when that happens, it can stop you long enough to reconsider the whole picture.

That is what happened to me this season at a Seahawks game.

The photos that triggered this reflection came from the divisional playoff game when the beat the 49ers in a game that felt decided almost immediately. The night started the way playoff nights in Seattle often do, with an intensity that builds long before the opening kickoff. When the ball finally went into the air, the entire stadium moved in unison. Everyone was yelling as loudly as possible, not because anyone told us to, but because rivalry games demand it.

Then Rasheed Shaheed returned the opening kickoff all the way for a touchdown.

In a matter of seconds, anticipation turned into belief. The noise went from loud to something harder to describe. What had been framed as a tense playoff matchup became a blowout that felt cathartic, the kind of game that releases years of pent-up emotion for an entire fan base.

I was there in my season tickets with my son, the same seats we have sat in all year as he has gotten deeper into football. This season has been formative for him. He has learned the rules, the players, and the rhythms of the game. He has learned what it feels like to care.

For me, it has been something else entirely.

Because every time we sit down together, I am watching two timelines unfold at once.

I started going to Seahawks games with my dad when I was very young, back when they played in the Kingdome. We sat in the 300 level, second row, right on the 50-yard line. If you ever spent time in that building, you remember how steep it felt. You also remember the noise, the way it echoed and rattled, the sense that the entire structure might lift off if the crowd leaned hard enough into the moment.

I remember the rituals more than the outcomes. The walk into the stadium. The smell of concrete and concessions. The way my dad always seemed to know exactly when to stand and yell. I remember screaming until my throat hurt and not caring in the slightest.

And I remember the ticket stubs.

Every single one of them.

I have saved every ticket from every game I have ever been to. They are still with me, carefully preserved. Those small pieces of paper were proof that the moment happened. They were artifacts, tangible reminders that we were there. When the game ended and the lights went out, the rest lived only in memory.

That is what attending a game used to leave you with.

Fast forward to now.

Sporting events are saturated with technology. Floating cameras glide above the field. Overhead rigs track every angle. Drones are tethered in place, capturing the crowd as much as the action. As a regular fan, I have mostly stopped noticing them. They are simply part of the environment now, as ordinary as the scoreboard or the PA system.

That is why these images caught me off guard, not when I first saw them, but when I shared them.

I showed the photos to my wife, my mom, and my mother-in-law. I expected polite interest. Instead, I got something else entirely. They were struck by the intimacy of what the images captured. Not the score, not the play on the field, but the candid reactions. The shared expressions. The moments no one knew were being recorded.

Some of them were genuinely emotional.

They were not reacting as football fans. They were reacting as people who understood what it meant to have a moment preserved that otherwise would have disappeared as soon as it happened. What felt normal to me as someone inside the experience felt extraordinary to them when viewed from the outside.

That reaction forced me to slow down and reconsider what had become background noise.

As fans, we have started to take this for granted. The cameras fade into the periphery. The access feels routine. But to people who are not steeped in it, what exists now is astonishing. This is what going to a game looks like today. Moments are being captured without anyone trying to pose, perform, or curate themselves for the lens.

It is simply life unfolding in real time.

That distinction matters.

Because while technology often intrudes, it also preserves. And sometimes it preserves the things we would most want to hold onto later.

This is not to romanticize the lens. The cameras do not always find us at our best. Sometimes they catch us looking at our phones, mid-bite with nachos, or stepping away at exactly the wrong moment. There are real conversations to be had about consent, boundaries, and where the line should be drawn.

But occasionally, the lens lands on something you could never manufacture.

A spontaneous reaction.
A shared glance between a parent and child.
The instant when noise turns into joy.

Those moments cannot be staged. They only exist because no one is trying to create them.

Watching my son react to that opening kickoff return, to the noise, to the collective energy of the crowd, I realized something unexpected. He does not carry the weight of the history yet. He does not remember the losing seasons, the frustration, the years when hope felt conditional. His experience is immediate and unburdened.

And that is exactly how it should be.

My appreciation comes from a different place. It comes from remembering what it felt like to be his age, sitting next to my own dad, screaming my lungs out in a building that no longer exists. Those moments mattered just as much, even if they were never recorded.

The difference now is that they do not have to disappear.

That is the part I was not prepared for.

Technology has not just changed how we watch games. It has changed how memory works. The ticket stubs I saved were placeholders for moments I hoped I would never forget. These images are something else. They do not replace memory. They reinforce it. They do not cheapen the experience. They deepen it.

I would give anything to have images like this from games with my dad when I was a kid. Not because I do not remember those moments, but because memory fades in ways you only notice with time. Those experiences were real. They mattered. But once the stadium emptied, they lived only in our heads.

Now, some of them do not have to.

None of this erases the legitimate concerns about technology. We still need to ask hard questions. We still need to draw boundaries. We still need to be thoughtful about how much we allow into our lives.

But it is also worth acknowledging the full picture.

Technology can intrude, and it can preserve. It can create unease, and it can hold moments we would otherwise lose forever.

Standing there in the stadium, watching my son experience something I once experienced with my own dad, I felt the weight of that continuity. Same team. Different building. Different era. Same feeling.

And now, a record of it that will still exist when memory starts to blur.

For moments like that, I am grateful the camera was there. Not because it watched us, but because it remembered for us.