On the Colbert Report recently, there was a joke in which Stephen pretended it was 1997 and wheeled out an old dial-up modem, which he used to connect to America Online. And, just like that, I was nostalgic.
How I missed that grating dial-up process and the frequent disconnections.
But, through the nostalgia, as I surfed the Internet effortlessly on my fancy wireless laptop, I started thinking about just how far technology has come - and how weird the world will be to us 20 years from now.
Being the raconteur that I am, maybe a story will help illustrate my point. A few days ago I was hanging out with a good friend of mine. We were just talking, joking about random things - pretty much the usual. Then we both got text messages. For about the next 15 minutes, we barely said a word as each of us got absorbed in sending and replying to several texts at once. And what's absolutely hilarious - what makes me laugh to no end - is that this is what, today, passes for two people hanging out.
Remember the days before text messaging - before cell phones even - when in order to hang out people actually had to (weird, huh?) talk to each other. A person could get hit with a wave of social anxiety just thinking about it. I can't wait to see what things are like for the next generation or so.
I fully expect children to invite their friends over after school and each of them plug into their very own virtual reality headset. One could be playing baseball, one at a concert (the thought of how strange music will be in the future, considering that in 50 short years we went from Sinatra to Nirvana, terrifies me) and another, assuming global warming leaves us with any water, could be jet-skiing. And this kind of intensive social interaction would be reserved only for the best of friends!
The comedy of the future as some sort of introvert's paradise aside, let me say that I firmly believe that technology is strangling us all. As always, technological advances are about "could" and not "should." I mean, is there really anyone alive who thinks the iPod Shuffle was a good idea? Technology is increasingly cutting us off not only from the world but from one another. Today a person doesn't even have to leave his home to buy groceries. One can do all their "social" interaction on the Internet, if so inclined.
We're becoming a society of pale vampires - and not the Edward Cullen type so praised on the message boards.
Technology has, of course, done great things for the world. Medical advances have saved countless lives, and only a Tyler Durden-style Luddite would want to undo such things. But the fact remains that some advances of technology - generally in the field of mass communication - cause just as much harm, if not more, than they do good.
I'm reminded of a fantastic scene from "Inherit the Wind" where Henry Drummond tells us that "Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You've got to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man behind a counter who says, 'All right, you can have a telephone, but you'll have to give up privacy, the charm of distance…Mister, you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline!'"
Think about it. And, please, do it outside and with some IRL friends.
Eric Chianese is an English junior. His column appears weekly.
