First of all, how absolutely short-sighted and vain is it to name the age you live in while you live in it? I mean there are like Protozoic and Jurassic; Bronze, Iron and Stone Ages or whatever, with an Ice Age or two thrown in there for variety and flavor, but you don't get to make up a new Age while anyone who lived in it is still alive. And you also don't do it so your current generation can fellate itself while congratulating itself on how innovative and cutting edge it is. Like, I don't seem to recall there being a Compass Age, or a Poetry Age, or say, a Democracy Age, then a Christianity Age, or a Scientologist Age, or the Plastic Age maybe, how about we throw in the Analog Age and the Sitcom Age or the SUV Age.
You don't get to call it an Age until it changes some basic tenet of everyday life, all across the human race. I tell you what--when every last Honduran and Tibetan and Papua New Guinean can't function day to day without their iPhone then I might concede that we are living in a Digital Age. More than anything we are living in the Capitalistic Age, and every last person on earth can feel the effects of that one.
However! I digress.
The Digital Age is a convenient scapegoat, but not a very good one, if you bother to think about it for longer than the two seconds it takes to spout off your "subversive" viewpoints. Before the computer and cell phone made people anti-social, it was video games. Before video games it was headphones and answering machines. But computers, cellphones, video games, headphones and answering machines don't actually sound like very sturdy beasts of burden if you're looking for them to lug around the blame for why you'd rather text an absent party than look at the person in front of you. And it would be difficult to prove that these instruments of the "Digital Age" do anything but bring us closer together--sometimes closer than we'd rather be.
Social networking sites are fantastic examples. I can keep up with people I never see anymore, or haven't seen in a while, or wouldn't even think about were it not for my Facebook page. I've gotten back in contact with people I thought I'd never see again but as we were both so accessible through the internet, the friendship will be saved or re-kindled.
And remember when you would leave the house alone, and stay alone until you either met someone on the street or got back home? You didn't have all of your friends living in your pocket, accessible at the touch of a button. If you went out to run errands no one could ask you at the spur of the moment to come have a drink. You would get home from your tasks, listen to your machine, and find out you had been two blocks away from where all your friends had been congregating and have now missed out on the best kickin' it session of the year, the one that will be constantly referred to from now until forever... all because no one had a cellular leash around your neck.
Sometimes I think about the amount of time I spend on MySpace and Facebook and wonder if it's all a bit unhealthy. But the fact remains that I spend the majority of my socializing doing face-time with friends who live in the same city as I do. I have a cell phone but I much prefer talking in person--I actually really hate talking on the phone, whether at home or out and about. Without my phone and the text message I would lead a pretty predictable and unspontaneous social life.
Obsessed gizmo fans are nothing new. Guns don't kill people, coffee doesn't maliciously scald, televisions don't make you lazy, McDonald's doesn't make you fat, and technological novelties don't make people apathetic and anti-social. Society has been all about the Next New Thing That Will Make Your Life Easier/Cooler/More Like Something Out of a Movie for ever and ever.
Ages, even.
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2 comments:
I was anti cell phone for years. I didn't get one until it was forced on me by my mother who was concerned about me commuting to and from work. And even then I felt imprisoned by it. I called you on your cell and you didn't pick up. I sent you a text. Why did you answer the house phone and not the cell? Bleh Bleh Bleh, then I got hooked. Ditched the house phone all together and became strictly a cell phone girl. Now I can't think of being without it. Like all things new and fantastical technology should be taken in moderation.
My girlfriend got her children a Wii, but they don't play for hours and hours. If they can't play as a family then it just doesn't happen.
I was anti-CDs, but I alllllways wanted to have a cell phone. I was the first kid in my high school to have one, which is a funny thought when you think about how basically 100% of high school students now carry phones. Mine was a bigass Zack Morris phone--OK, so a bit smaller, cos it was 1997 by then, but you get the picture.
Video games as scapegoats are really bad cos there are tons of problem solving and analytical skills they develop, as well as hand-eye coordination. I like your friend's approach that they have to play as a family, that's great!
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