I first realized I was a technology-lover when I witnessed the power of Google. No more encyclopedias, books or effort for me, I thought. This six-letter word is going to make the rest of high school a piece of cake.
I discovered I was actually a technology-hater the first day I caught a glimpse of a guy shouting into a hands-free cell phone headset. In the words of Dee of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," I wondered if the guy rocking the Bluetooth was part robot and part jackass.
Since that unfortunate first sighting, I've continued to witness the technological shackles relentlessly grind American carpals into chalk.
The most horrifying aspect of this electronic reign of terror is that we are at the mercy of lithium-ion batteries, and there is no escape.
If you own a laptop, you better pray to the recently mechanized gods your battery lasts more than a year - or at least putters out before the end of the extended warranty you purchased. Otherwise, your inconsistent "Twittering" will leave your friends frightened and befuddled because they couldn't figure out what you did from 2:15 to 2:45 last Wednesday afternoon.
Friends don't leave friends hanging on Twitter.
There is no way to circumvent this problem. Society cannot function on desktops alone - the thought is laughable. What if you need a vanilla latte and YouTube at the same time? You can't have one without the other; they go together like lamb and tuna fish.
Obviously, you aren't going to tote your 70-pound HP behemoth to the corner to set up shop at your friendly neighborhood Starbucks. Committing such a crime against the technological dictatorship would result in scoffs, eye-rolling and maybe even a good, old-fashioned stoning.
Using newer technology like Google phones and iPhones may seem like a solution to the cumbersome burden of desktops, but these so-called breakthroughs only bring you back to the lithium-ion palace to grovel at the feet of the almighty battery.
Don't get me started on the evils of the iPod. The click-wheel plague has laid waste to nearly every drop of congenial human interaction left flowing through the blood of our species. Once they went Nano, our white blood cells didn't stand a chance.
The most identifiable player in the technological regime is also the combatant that deserves the majority of the blame for America's gadget dependence: the cell phone.
The foot soldiers of this war, cell phones toil in the trenches (rather, human ear canals) for thousands of minutes per month. For their troubles, they are broken on a daily basis. Countless cell phones are left for dead in hot tubs, Solo cups and toilets nationwide.
The success of the information infantry is ensured by Americans' need to talk, text or at least clutch a cell phone at all times for no apparent reason. Thus, despite the ever-increasing number of casualties, the cell phone assault never wavers.
Millions of Americans are foolish enough to buy into the notion that these technological "advances" make life easier for all of us.
Nothing could be further from the truth. These gadgets and gizmos are incessantly nibbling away at the corners of humanity.
We don't need to halt technological advances; President Harry Truman learned the horrors of the no-holds-barred approach. Instead, we need to reassess ourselves as social beings.
If we continue our current pace, one day we'll all wake up in vats of translucent, pink goo with USB ports implanted all over our bodies.
In the event of this worst-case scenario only one thing is certain: You will not want to disconnect without properly ejecting first.
Adam Wynn is a journalism senior. His column appears on Fridays.
